


Something Wicked This Way Comes

by barbaricyawp



Series: Along Came a Spider [3]
Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Body Horror, Bottom Eddie Brock, Breathplay, Cannibalism, Choking, Cigarettes, Consent Play, Double Anal Penetration, Double Penetration, Forced Orgasm, Gore, Height Kink, M/M, Multi, Mutilation, Needles, Only in chapter four, Prostate Milking, Rape/Non-con Elements, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts, Tentacles, Top Eddie Brock, Vomiting, again only in chapter four, okay and chapter six now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-11-18 11:12:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18119657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbaricyawp/pseuds/barbaricyawp
Summary: In which Peter likes high chances that he might lose. And he loses often.The third installation of the Along Came a Spider series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't think I was going to write this, but I've gotten enough encouragement here and on tumblr that I think I'm ready to try. Thanks for liking this stuff, ya animals.
> 
> Credit to [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) for beta-ing. I am weak with gratitude.
> 
> Peter is still an adult in this. In fact, he's more of an adult now than he was before.

 

Eddie’s got Peter pressed up against the door by his hips. Peter just returned home, flustered from a windy walk. His backpack and jacket slouch off his elbows. But the bulk of Venom and Eddie is warm, a comfort. And Venom gets its limbs between his legs, and Peter’s being pushed up, up until his toes brush the floor.

“We missed you,” Eddie rumbles against his lips. “Thought about this the whole time. What we were gonna do to you. How we were gonna do it.”

Peter whines in the back of his throat. “I was only gone for an hour. Bank heist.”

“You smell like sweat,” Venom growls, disembodied but somehow close. “Sweet sticky body.”

Peter knows what they’re getting at. He lifts up his chin, exposing his neck so Eddie can drag his tongue along the vein at his throat. All three groan, and Peter’s hips buck forward against Eddie’s hip.

Though they’re about the same height, Venom is beginning to surround Eddie, lifting him up to a bigger size. Peter, too, is lifted until his feet are totally off the ground, suspended by the crush of Venom and Eddie against him.

Peter loves it. Craves feeling tiny and vulnerable. It’s so good like this.

Venom’s long tongue uncurls, wrapping around Peter’s neck like a snake. It squeezes down on his pulse, just a tease before releasing again. And then there’s a hand sliding down the back of Peter’s jeans. Venom’s all Peter can see, but this is Eddie’s hand, Eddie soft blunt fingers, slicked with lube rubbing against his entrance. (Peter never knows where they get the lube from. If they make it themselves, or if Eddie's just sly.)

“Please,” Peter whines, just barely a hoarse whisper. “Please, do it. I like it, you know I do.”

“What do you like exactly?” That’s Eddie’s voice, and even muffled beneath the mask of Venom, Peter can hear his sardonic lilt of mockery. He loves seeing Peter embarrassed, loves seeing him writhe.

“Guh—” Peter tries, fails because Venom’s grinding a thigh between Peter’s legs and the friction is just too good. His eyes roll back.

“What did he say?” Venom confers with Eddie. “I couldn’t hear him.”

“ _Guh_ ,” Eddie replies with a sardonic smile. Peter’s face heats. “Think we overwhelmed him.”

“Shame,” Venom says as it slides Peter’s jeans down over his hips.

The sharps of its claws catch over Peter’s hipbone, but it’s barely a scratch. When his jeans slide down his thighs, Peter’s dick springs out over the waistband. It smacks his stomach wetly, and then Venom grinds their hips together, crushing it between them.

“Shame,” Venom repeats. “We had so much left to do to him. So many tight, wet places to explore.”

“Go on then,” Peter blurts, and he’s really blushing now. His hips are twitching uncontrollably against Venom’s, bucking back into Eddie’s fingers. His mouth is slack, as if the rest of his body is too focused on pleasure to control itself. “Your fingers. Eddie’s. I want them.”

“Love it when he talks dirty,” Eddie sighs, and sinks his fingers into Peter.

“We are the dirty talkers,” Venom growls. It’s dipped its head to brush its teeth against Peter’s adam’s apple. The wet exhale of its breath makes Peter’s knees buckle.

“That’s the joke, V,” Eddie laughs. “We’re teasing him.”

“Ah,” Venom says, as if it has known this all along.

“Guys…” Peter whines.

Eddie, the sadist, isn’t moving his fingers inside Peter, just holding them at the rim. Making Peter wait. Venom grins down at Peter. “We’re going to have a good, long night with you.”

 

\---

 

Peter’s been face down on this bed for hours now, dragged to the brink of orgasm only to have it ripped from him just so that they can watch. They’re loving this.

A few minutes ago, he was propped up on all fours, but then his arms gave out. Now Peter is lying open-mouthed in a puddle of his own saliva, eyes rolled back in his head as his symbiote boyfriends hold him by the hips.

“Someday, I’ll bond with you when you’re like this. Get inside you and become one,” Venom says, teeth grazing over Peter’s sloped spine. “Then Eddie can fuck us both.”

“Oh my god,” Peter says into the pillow, arching up against them. “Can you…your hands…Eddie?”

Eddie knows what Peter’s asking for, what he’s asked a million times for. They turn Peter over, knees still bent to his chest, like a dead spider all curled up. Eddie emerges from Venom and wraps a broad hand around the base of Peter’s throat. Eddie's thumb eases against Peter's carotid artery. Venom gurgles a sigh when they feel Peter’s heartbeat rush against Eddie’s thumb.

Peter knows his heartbeat is what it likes best; it has told him so.

“You know,” Eddie murmurs into his ear, “If Venom bonds with you? It’ll be able to make you stop breathing from the inside.”

“I can simply _decide_ not to let you breathe,” Venom clarifies, and Eddie holds Peter down by the throat.

They sink back into his hole as Eddie cuts off his air supply, and Peter is just the right kind of full, just the right kind of dizzy. They ease back out and, just before pushing in, Eddie lets Peter breathe. He strokes the hair back from his face, gentle-like.

Peter doesn’t want gentle. Peter wants something he can feel all over. He grasps for Eddie’s wrist, pulling it back down towards his throat.

“Again.”

“Slut,” Venom chirps fondly. As a reward, it forms a third arm below Eddie’s to wrap a hand around Peter’s dick. Peter arches and whines some more.

“Okay, okay,” Eddie hushes him. “Take a deep breath.”

Peter does as he’s told. The air in his lungs turns into a hot pressure when Eddie closes a hand around his throat. It’s good. Makes him feel like he’s on the edge, balancing.

But he can still breathe. And it’s not quite enough. He needs something. A push. Just a little more. “Harder,” he rasps.

“You sure?” Eddie sounds audibly queasy. “Peter, I…”

Peter holds Eddie’s hand against his throat, forcing him to press harder. Without Venom’s interference, Peter is stronger than Eddie, and he gets the pressure just right. When Peter eases up, Eddie holds the pressure, his eyes fixed on Peter’s. Watching him.

Carbon dioxide accumulates and then floods Peter’s brain. He attempts to breathe, and when he finds that he can’t, the giddy rush of adrenaline has him squirming up against them. He comes, surprising even himself, thrashing and gasping out whatever is left in his lungs.

Venom is like a shark in the water, and Peter’s just spilled blood. It rams into him with newfound stamina, jackrabbiting and twisting its hips without art or design. It favors depth and speed over finesse. Peter feels absolutely assaulted and _loves it._

But Eddie still has some of his wits about him. He tries to lift his hand from Peter’s throat, but Peter clamps his hand down over his, holding him in place. Eddie notices immediately and tries to rip it out from under his grasp, but Peter’s palm is sticky. He’s stronger. Eddie's hand stays put.

There’s a chance Peter might pass out from this—he’s already very close. His vision is rimmed with darkness; his whole body feels like a distant afterthought. But he wants to see if he can make them come first. He wants to know what it feels like.

“Peter!” Eddie snaps. And then his hand isn’t just Eddie’s, but Venom’s too, and they’re prying it from beneath Peter’s grip.

Oxygen rushes to his brain and through his blood. Venom must be able to smell it in his veins; it gives a low growl and laves its tongue along the oxygenated bulge of Peter's carotid artery. Peter is alight. The sudden release from hypoxia is so good and so intense that within a few gasps, he’s seizing through another orgasm. The hot wetness that washes inside him indicates that Venom and Eddie have followed suit.

By his next breath, Peter’s being scooped up into a tangle of Eddie’s and Venom’s limbs. They cradle him close, suspending him several inches from the bed so that the entire length of his body can mold against theirs. They're a perfect fit.

Eddie cups Peter's jaw to press their foreheads together. “Don’t do that again,” he mutters, each word strained tight with worry. “I mean it, Peter. That was bad.”

Peter nods, hazy and easy now that he’s gotten what he wants. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I got carried away.”

“We all did,” Venom says sagely. And that ends that.

 

\---

 

The new webshooters sent over by Tony are malfunctioning. Peter has been hunched over them at the kitchen counter for the past three hours. The webshooters are pluming blue smoke, Peter is constantly misplacing his phillip’s head screwdriver—it’s always behind his ear—and he's electrocuted himself more than once. Five times. Eddie kept track.

By now, Eddie would have chucked them against the wall in sheer frustration. But Peter remains laser focused, even when a cuff bursts and sprays sticky webbing all over his face. Even the cabinets are sprayed with burnt webbing. Eddie cringes, thinking about having to clean them. Venom thinks the cabinets look rather nice like that. Homey.

When Peter gets himself in the eye, Eddie helps peel the webbing from Peter’s eyelids and cheeks. He kisses the angry-pink skin until Peter swats him away, laughing.

“I gotta finish, Eddie,” Peter says, rubbing his eyes. “I need these for tonight. My other set is totally busted.”

“And these aren’t?” Eddie says, eyeing the dismantled webshooters. He and Venom are both distrusting of them; they’re life and death for Peter, but fickle like any machine. Webshooters can be broken or dropped. They wish Peter wouldn’t rely on them so heavily.

Perhaps their mistrust comes from their own lack of technological crutches. Eddie is completely fused with Venom. He can’t malfunction or be lost. It’s tough to accept that Peter doesn’t have that kind of certainty.

 _Make him stay,_ Venom insists. It has sprouted tendrils from Eddie’s back, curling around Peter’s ankles as if this can root him into place.

 _I can’t_ , but Eddie savors the way Venom sneaks up Peter’s pant leg and rubs against the cool knob of his ankle’s talus bone.

"Stop that," Peter laughs, faux-kicking them away.

Before setting out to the streets, Peter is always aglow. He loves protecting the city, Eddie realizes. He loves the thrill and the rush and the chase. Though their protective streak makes it difficult for Venom and Eddie to see Peter go, they can’t deny that he’s glorious in his element. Even if his element is studiously tweaking his webshooters with the spidey suit rolled down to his waist for comfort.

Eddie skims one of Venom's talons against the notches of Peter's bare spine. “What’s going down tonight?”

“Another shipment from Kingpin,” Peter says, “This one via truck, so it should be quick, but, uh...”

“Want a hand?”

“That might be good. I’ve seen Carnage hanging around Kingpin lately, and I don’t want to take a chance.” Peter’s attention is already back on his webshooters. “I’ve just about got this. Think you can be crime-fighting ready in about an hour?”

“Looking forward to it.” Eddie kisses the top of his head, lingers there for a moment. “Hey about last night,” Eddie says. “Are you—”

“I’m okay,” Peter says. “That’s fun for me. A little danger is fun for me.”

“Uh huh,” Eddie says skeptically, glancing down to the cuffs. They're still spitting out a thin stream of smoke. “And you’re sure these are safe?”

“Well, hurling my unarmored body through the city on webslingers isn’t exactly _safe,_ but…” Peter rises up out of his chair to kiss his cheek. “Safe as I ever am.”

“That’s comforting, Peter.”

 

\---

 

As it turns out, it’s a good thing that Eddie and Venom tagged along for this mission. Because this was most definitely a trap. It only takes a matter of minutes for henchmen to swarm the docks. Kingpin’s henchmen. The goons are freaking everywhere, and Peter can’t catch a break.

One of the first things they did was wheel out a massive EMP generator that knocked Venom to its back and disabled Karen’s AI in Peter’s suit. No Karen plus his faulty webshooters spells big trouble.

Well, big trouble if Peter was on his own.

Despite the minor setback from the first EMP pulse, Venom is plucking the heads off of henchmen and eating them like popcorn. Anyone who lands a hit on Peter is instantly met with Venom’s rage, and the henchmen are beginning to avoid Peter entirely. Victory is close.

Peter is launching himself into the air, ready to airstrike the huddle of men gathering around Venom, when he sees the big thug himself: Kingpin.

He pulls up in a black limousine, probably the only car big enough to fit a behemoth like Kingpin short of a freaking _tank_. Peter webs three guys in cheap suits to the pavement, but he’d aimed for five. Not his best work, but he's up against a lot here: his webshooters are short-circuiting, and he’s gotta keep one eye on Kingpin.

Kingpin emerges from the limousine, unfolding out of the low door. Then, calm as anything, he looks up at Peter and lifts one finger towards him, thumb cocked up like a gun. He closes one eye and compresses his thumb, mouths _Bang!_  Kingpin smiles.

Every hair raises on Peter’s body. If Kingpin has actually deigned to show up, then something _really_ bad is about to go down. On instinct, Peter swivels his head around and searches the darkness for Carnage. For another symbiote: the only true match for the likes of Venom and Spider-Man.

But there is no Carnage. It is a truck that pulls up next. A plain white van that—while it definitely gives off creepy _Free candy, kids!_ kind of vibes—isn’t by any means intimidating. Kingpin makes a gesture to unload the truck. Four henchmen roll out what appears to be a giant steel birdcage.

Just when Peter thought the supervillains of NYC were getting boring.

He shoots a web from each wrist to propel himself towards the truck. Or, he tries to. His left cuff spits out a puff of black smoke and jams. The right cuff only produces half the amount of webbing it should. _Fuck._ Peter hits the truck lopsided, rolls to the ground with a groan.

Venom is after him in a moment. Peter tries to warn him to stay away—just Kingpin’s presence has his heart hammering rabbit fast—but it’s too late. Venom lopes towards him on all fours, just as they raise the cage over it, over them.

“Venom, no!”

The strange metal cage drops down around Venom. It would be intimidating, but there’s a major design flaw in the cage. The space between the bars is wide enough for Venom to shift through. Peter almost pities Kingpin for being so woefully underprepared.

But then the bars start rattling, a low tone emitting from them that climbs in pitch as the bars vibrate faster. Venom screams, a terrible grating screech. Hunched over, it looks for escape, but there’s nowhere to go. Every time it approaches the bars, the sound peels Venom from Eddie as if burning it off.

Now the entire cage is vibrating at a pitch that Peter’s ear can’t catch. He thrashes against Kingpin’s hold, but can’t get enough leverage.

Venom is in agony. It rises off Eddie in plates and strands, leaving him exposed. One of the henchmen lifts a gun, aiming it for Eddie. Peter’s blood seems to evaporate from his veins.

Kingpin leans down into Peter’s ear and murmurs, “Watch this, kid.”

What happens next is so quick, Peter barely understands it. He manages to wrest himself from Kingpin’s hold and launch himself at Venom and Eddie. The moment he’s airborne, Peter hears the shot go off. Venom is completely separate from Eddie now, a shell hovering around him.

There’s a pain in Peter’s chest, and he drops to the ground.

When Peter lifts his head again, Venom is gone. Just...gone. Nowhere to be seen. Eddie is flat on his back in the middle of the cage, either unconscious or dead. Peter doesn’t know.

“You fucking idiot!” Kingpin charges towards the cage, and the weight of his footfalls is enough to shake the ground. “You were supposed to shoot Brock, not Spider-Man.”

“Bad guys have bad aim,” Peter rasps from the ground. He’s surprised by the faintness of his voice, by how thin it sounds even to his own ears. He’s in pain—a lot of it—and when he leans back on one palm, he’s surprised that the ground behind him is wet.

His heart is doing a weird lurching thing in his chest, as if it isn’t quite beating right. As if there’s something in the way.

Peter lifts his palm into his vision and, _oh yup,_ there’s blood. A lot of it. Bright red and pooling around him. Peter’s vision blurs, his center of gravity tilts, and he’s back on the ground again.

“Get Brock to the van. Hurry, before he wakes up.”

Peter’s eyes are on Eddie, but the huddle of men that surround him obscure his view. A shadow falls over Peter, and he rolls his head up to see Kingpin. Just great. The brute in a suit presses his foot to Peter’s shoulder, rolling him onto his stomach to check the exit wound. The movement causes more blood to gush from Peter. He groans in pain.

His heart lurches again, then pauses. For a moment, it’s gone still in his chest. Then, as if a hand reached out and squeezed it, his pulse picks up again.

Through all this, Peter keeps his eyes on Eddie. They’re lifting the cage. They’re dragging him away. They're dragging him towards the van. Peter reaches out a hand towards him, but it falls to the concrete and, once it’s down, his arm is too heavy to lift again.

“What should we do with him, boss?”

“Leave him,” Kingpin says. “Not even Spider-Man can survive a shot like that.” Kingpin’s rumbling steps retreat. “Congratulations, Joey. You just killed Spider-Man.”

Peter hears the muffled thump of a hand clapping his shooter on the back. He hears the van doors open, Eddie’s body put inside.

They’re taking Eddie. They’re taking _Eddie._ And Peter needs to do something, needs to do something _now_ or they’ll take him away and he…

And he…

He blacks out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outrage and moral panic can be directed to my tumblr at [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some mild gore, vomiting, and cannibalism. Symbiote stuff.
> 
> Gratitude to [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) for beta-ing. You are a godsend.
> 
> Also, what do you know? Peter is still an adult in this.

 

Eddie wakes up feeling quite literally like he’s been scooped out. Hollowed. Like all his insides have been carved out and dumped onto the ground. Like a jack-o’-lantern.

He sits up slowly and takes in his surroundings: Eddie is on a bare cot in a glass-walled cell. Everything, including the scrubs they dressed him in, is optical white. Typical, really. Cells like these look just like the cells in the Life Foundation.

And boy, oh boy does that bode well.

To his left is a solid wall of concrete painted white. To his right is another cell, divided from his own by a thick wall of glass. This one is empty and unfurnished. But definitely a cell.

The light in his own enclosure is a blindingly bright fluorescent. The glare from the glass makes it difficult to see out into the dark hall. When Eddie cups his hands to the glass and peers through, he can just barely make out long corridors winding into complete darkness.

There’s no one around. Now is their chance to escape.

“Alright, buddy,” Eddie murmurs to Venom. He rocks his head from side to side. “Let’s get out of here.”

Venom has no reply. Strange.

Well then, Eddie will just have to coax Venom out himself. Sometimes Venom slumbers, sometimes Venom ignores him, but now is not the time. Eddie reaches inside himself and tries to summon the thick mass of Venom around him. Nothing comes.

“V?” Eddie asks the silence. Then, he turns the question inward, searching his synapses and sinews for the symbiote.  _ Venom? _

He finds nothing.

“Venom!” Eddie cries out, and now he’s in a panic. All the crevices and dark places where Venom used to lurk inside him…they are empty. Eddie is empty.

Then he remembers: the cage on the streets.  The strange, wrenching vibration of its bars. Kingpin. The way it felt like they were being split apart. Like Venom was being dragged from his body, hauled out, like…

Like they’ve been separated.

 

\---

 

SEVERAL YEARS AGO…

Eddie has a propensity to overthink when left to his own devices without distraction. It’s part of why he leaves the TV on with the noise blaring at all times. Even though he’s no longer alone (ever), he still can’t stand silence of any kind for any duration.

Only a year into its bond with Eddie, Venom hasn’t adjusted to this quirk yet. The constant noise overwhelms Venom, almost as much as the silence overwhelms Eddie. They’re still getting used to each other. Eddie isn’t yet accustomed to the constant companionship, and Venom is adjusting to life alongside a human.

_ It’s distracting, _ Venom grumbles about the TV while Eddie is cooking them dinner. He’s left on Gordon Ramsay in the living room. Right now, Gordon is railing on a pizzeria owner, deeming the marinara “garbage water made adjacent to a tomato.”

“You’re not doing anything right now to be distracted from, Ven.” Eddie hasn’t quite settled on what to call Venom yet. Sometimes it is Venom. Sometimes, Ven. Sometimes, V. Eddie hasn’t decided which suits best.

“Then it’s annoying,” Venom says aloud, true irritation spiking in its voice now.

From the living room, Gordon goes hoarse shouting about an overly fishy Caesar salad. Eddie chuckles. Venom does not.

“You can pick something else to put on,” Eddie says easily.

“Streetcar,” Venom decides in a snap, meaning  _ A Streetcar Named Desire. _

The movie has rapidly become one of Venom’s favorites because it likes when Stanley lets beer froth all over him. Furthermore, it claims that Marlon Brando looks like Eddie. Eddie doesn’t need to tell it how flattering the comparison is.

“Mm, switch the TV over then,” Eddie says.

He strides to the fridge to fetch the ground beef. Meanwhile, Venom snakes out a tendril across the apartment to their living room. Eddie is distantly aware that it is feeding the DVD into the player, but his attention remains primarily focused on making meatballs for the spaghetti. It’s miraculous how they can operate like this: with two separate, but connected consciousnesses.

When Venom notices Eddie’s attention on the bond, it rubs against the back of Eddie’s neck affectionately. Eddie tilts his head back and relishes how the hair at the nape of his neck bristles against Venom’s tendril.

Jazz horns and violins sweep over the opening credits of  _ Streetcar _ . Tunelessly, Venom hums along to the melody. Its warbling adds to the dramatic cacophony, no longer annoyed by the noise since it’s now a participant.

For the first time in a long time, Eddie experiences real peace.

The meatballs are nearly done. Eddie’s knuckles squish into the raw meat and red liquid bubbles up between his fingertips. The juice from meat, Eddie has recently learned from Venom, isn’t blood but a combination of water and myoglobin. (Myoglobin is some protein or chemical or whatever that transports oxygen. Venom says the oxygen gives myoglobin a smoky flavor. Eddie thinks Venom is fucking with him.)

All that liquid red looks like blood. Eddie is struck with a foreign craving to lick his fingers.

_ I could do that for you. _

“Be my guest,” Eddie says as he transfers the meatballs to a baking sheet. When he slides them into the oven and shuts the door, Venom’s tongue snakes from the proxy-head over his shoulder. Eddie shivers at the sensation of its tongue over his fingers. Slick, dexterous. 

Venom slinks back into Eddie once it’s done. Eddie washes his hands in the sink. On screen, Stella boards the streetcar named Desire. And there’s that feeling again, warming Eddie’s chest: contentment.

_ Were you lonely before me?  _ Venom asks after a stretch.

“Were you?”

_ I was incomplete. _

Eddie nods. The water for the pasta is boiling over. He turns down the heat. The spaghetti is done which, damn it, means that he mistimed the meatballs. Again.

_ You didn’t answer my question. _

Eddie sighs and strains the pasta. He figures that the sauce and meatballs will warm the spaghetti. “Can we table this discussion until after dinner?”

Venom hesitates, then agrees.  _ Only if we can have sex first. _

They’ve got an hour on the timer for the meatballs. Eddie nods. “Deal.”

 

\---

 

Once they're on the bed, Venom rolls Eddie over onto his belly with surprising care. Eddie rubs his cheek against the mattress and reaches up to grasp a pillow between his hands.

All over Eddie’s back and thighs, Venom has spread its sticky mass. Gluing him down to the mattress, immobilizing him so that he’s subject to Venom’s whims. The press of it is warm against Eddie. Almost liquid and thick, like oil. Venom drips down over Eddie’s rib cage and between his legs. It gives a pleased sigh.

_ I can feel your heartbeat. All your blood in your veins. All the air in your lungs. All the cells in your tissue and all the tissue in your organs. _

Venom is unlike anything Eddie has ever touched before. When he rocks his hips up against it to test the sensation, he is rewarded with hot, gooey pressure.

_ I wonder how much I can fit inside you,  _ Venom muses. It presses a tendril between Eddie’s cheeks, rubbing back and forth. The threat sends hot spikes of adrenaline up Eddie’s spine, and his body shudders all over.

Eddie’s been fucked by Venom before, but not like this. Not on his belly and not trapped like an insect in a spiderweb. He squirms against it, trying to wrest himself free just to see if he can.

As it turns out, he cannot.

Eddie struggles then, suddenly overwhelmed, and desperate to escape. Venom senses his distress through the bond instantly. It retracts its tendril.

_ The only person you’ve ever trusted is yourself _ . It would be an accusation if it weren’t stated with such empathy, with such utter understanding. Venom knows Eddie. Knows what he needs and what he is.

“I know,” Eddie whines. “I know.”

_ But I  _ am _ you now. And you can trust me. _

Eddie takes a deep breath and nods. That’s all Venom needs.

_ Trust me, Eddie. _

Venom collects Eddie’s hips off the bed so that he’s propped up on his knees. Then it spreads itself down Eddie’s right arm and guides their hand around his cock. When Eddie touches himself, he likes to rub his palm over the head then stroke himself from the top down. 

Venom does this for him now, a perfect replication of what Eddie does on his own.

But since it’s Venom’s skin on him, Eddie is particularly sensitive to the touch. Since it’s Venom in control, he ruts down against the cup of its palm. Their palm. Needful. Wanton.

The tendril returns, and this time Venom just tucks it right inside of Eddie. No hesitation. It just pushes in, pliable but unending. On and on until Eddie can feel the strain in his gut from being so full. And Venom just keeps on pushing more and more of itself inside of him. Filling him up as Eddie grinds his cock down against their shared hand.

The sensation is strange; Venom is such an odd texture. Eddie feels almost as if he’s being filled with honey or molasses. Slow and sticky as honey. Rich and thick like molasses.

Without realizing it, he’s been groaning and carrying on into the mattress. Without realizing it, they’ve been knocking the headboard against the wall as Eddie thrashes under Venom. He’s a gasping mess now, flushed all over.

_ Just look at you,  _ Venom coos, worshipful.  _ I adore you. _

Eddie’s never been able to let go like this and it’s so good to let his body go into freefall. He’s desperately hard now, dripping precum and squirming in Venom’s gooey hold from the outside and in. Eddie should be embarrassed, humiliated even. But he’s not. 

He just feels good.

The timer for the meatballs go off while Eddie is in the midst of an earth-shattering orgasm. Moments later, Marlon Brando cries out for “Stella!” on the streets.

Eddie rolls onto his back and holds the mass of Venom in his arms. He rubs his forehead against it and grins. In this moment, he feels big and complete.

 

\---

 

MEANWHILE…

For a long time, Eddie is left in the total quiet of his cell. And as he waits, ears ringing and thoughts spinning out, he realizes this is the first time in years that he’s been truly alone. Really, completely, alone.

He finds himself trying to talk to Venom. “I have class on Tuesday, wonder what they’ll do without me,” he says. Or, “At the very least you think they’d leave me a paperback to read.”

The reply is always resounding silence. And Eddie is always disappointed.

He’s pacing the cell, trying to remember the section of  _ Leaves of Grass  _ that he memorized for his undergraduate poetry class—anything to stave off the oncoming madness—when there’s a commotion outside.

The halls are abruptly illuminated with light and Eddie approaches the glass to watch the commotion. Three men in lab coats are wheeling what appears to be a corpse under a sheet down the hall on a medical gurney.

Eddie’s heart stops for a moment. His first thought is,  _ That’s Peter!  _ but as the body passes, he sees that it’s too large to be Peter. He sighs in relief, but that doesn’t let the lab coats off the hook.

“Hey!” Eddie bangs a fist against the glass at them. “Hey, where the hell are we?”

Correction: “Where the hell am  _ I?” _

Predictably, the lab coats pay him no attention. They deposit the corpse onto the floor of the adjacent cell, then wheel the gurney away. After they leave, the fluorescent lights in the halls are shut off with a chorus of clunks.  _ Chnk. Chnk. Chnk. _ And Eddie’s in darkness again.

Eddie’s attention turns to the other cell. The shock of red hair startles Eddie’s limbic system the same way that the black and yellow stripes of a wasp make him recoil. He knows instantly who it is.

“Kasady!” Eddie hollers through the glass, pounding his fists. “Kasady, wake up!”

The serial cannibal gives one loud snore and then rolls over onto his back. His mouth is sprawled open and drooling. To Eddie’s disgust, there’s a glimmer of pinkish red in his drool.

Blood. Fucking typical. Eddie kicks the glass and this time, Kasady springs up.

“Ugh,” Cletus Kasady says when he sees Eddie. “Back for another interview?”

“What are you doing here?” But Eddie is really asking,  _ Is Carnage with you? _

A pang of sympathy jolts through Eddie’s chest at the thought, at the absence of his own Venom. He’s empty inside. If Kasady has been separated from his symbiote, at least they have this in common.

“I plead the fifth,” Kasady says, stretching his limbs up. When he does, red-tinged sludge travels up his wrists and extends up to the ceiling, blooming into a claw. Carnage is still here.

“Oh sure,  _ he _ gets to keep his symbiote,” Eddie mumbles.

He doesn’t realize that he’s holding his breath for Venom’s response until Kasady starts laughing. A screeching laugh that ratchets higher and higher with each round. An ugly sound. Like all the sounds that Kasady makes.

Eddie’s attention snaps to him, lip curled. “What?”

“I saw your boyfriend.” Kasady lounges on the concrete floor, legs crossed at the knees. With one of Carnage’s talons, he picks out bits of pinkish flesh from his teeth. “Ooh, Lordy. Talk about a hot mess.”

“Which boyfriend?” Eddie says, tone as level as he can manage. His heart is thumping wildly against his ribcage. They’re alive. Or one of them is.

“Mm, forgot you’ve got yourself a creepy crawly little harem going. Venom or Spider-Man. Spider-Man or Venom. ” Kasady looks over Eddie, scraping plaque from his teeth. “I’ll tell you which one’s still kicking if you tell me which one you’re hoping for.”

Eddie winces. It’s likely that Carnage and Kasady are bluffing to get a rise out of Eddie.  But if only one of them is alive, he doesn’t want to know which is dead. Either way, Kasady’s is not a question worth answering. He scoffs and returns to his cot. Eddie lies flat on his back and stares at the ceiling. He’d rather listen to the ceiling than Kasady’s chaotic ramblings.

“You think I’m lying!” Kasady laughs. “Oh, but I’m not. Hold on. Just one second. Got something to show you.”

Eddie can hear the squelch and ripple of Carnage overtaking Kasady in the cell. Then there’s a terrible retching noise that sends Eddie jolting up again.

_ What the fuck is he doing? _ he thinks to Venom and, of course, gets no response.

They appear to be coughing up a hairball. Carnage is hunched over, spine arched up like a sick cat. And, sure enough, Carnage throws up onto the concrete floor. Stomach roiling (but thankfully empty) Eddie leans forward to get a better look.

Amongst the murk of bloody stomach bile, there’s a human hand. An  _ entire human hand. _

Eddie’s heart sinks. “No,” he rasps, fumbling out of the cot. He presses up against the glass that separates their cell, trying to get a closer look. “No, no you didn’t. You fucking bastard. You…”

The hand is covered in red spandex. A busted webshooter still on its wrist. It’s Peter’s hand. It couldn’t be anyone else’s.

Eddie slams both fists against the glass hard enough that the entire wall trembles and reverberates. Even Carnage stumbles back, momentarily shocked by Eddie’s outburst. And then, realizing that they’re safe behind the glass, Carnage melts away to reveal Kasady’s smirking mug.

“Looks like that’s all that’s left,” Kasady says simply.

The tears are streaming now, saltwater burning his tear ducts. He can’t sort through what he’s feeling; it’s too dark, there’s too much to feel.

Outrage doesn’t begin to cover it. Devastation is a good place to start.

Kasady is mocking him, making some sort of ghoulish joke about “giving Eddie a hand,” but his taunts land like static on Eddie’s numb ears.

That’s Peter’s hand. His hand that lays disembodied on the cell floor. His small, clever hand. The hand that Eddie has held in his own. It’s Peter’s hand.

They…Carnage ate him.

Eddie sinks to his knees and rests his forehead against the glass. He can’t bear to look at Peter’s hand a moment longer, but also can’t bear to look away. Mentally, he reaches out to Venom and, of course, finds nothing in response. This is when Venom would insist that they rip Carnage limb from limb. This is when Venom would comfort Eddie. This is when they would comfort each other.

But Venom is gone. Eddie is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sacrifices can be made in my honor at my tumblr: [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few announcements: the first being that I'm currently abroad and so the next few chapters might not be as consistent. To make up for it, this chapter is a bit longer.
> 
> Second, I somehow managed to cram a smoking kink, heights, consent play, and double penetration into a single sex scene. If any of that doesn't sound like your jam, it begins with "SEVERAL YEARS AGO..." and ends with "MEANWHILE..."
> 
> My eternal gratitude and humble [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) for beta-ing.
> 
> Peter is a child in this chapter. No, wait. He's still an adult.

 

Peter wakes up in a room so crisp, bright, and white, his first thought is  _ heaven  _ followed immediately by  _ hospital. _

Both guesses are proved wrong when Tony Stark struts into the room.

Peter leans up towards him, trying to get out of bed. He’s still dizzy, achy and feverish as if he has the flu. Bad, he feels bad.

“Eddie,” Peter says, voice still hoarse. “Where’s Eddie?”

“Sorry, kid,” Tony says, tapping on a tablet in the crook of his elbow. “We’re still working on that. Still trying to reboot Karen for you. Whatever Ol’ King Cole used really packed a wallop. I’d be impressed if I weren’t completely pissed off.”

Peter exhales slowly. He stares up at the ceiling, feeling totally blank. Tony must have collected him off the street and brought him back to his lab. Peter’s still in his spidey suit, minus the mask. The tight material feels like a layer of dead skin encasing him. Suffocating him.

Tears well under his eyelids, but don’t swell enough to fall.

When Tony finally looks up to Peter, his face softens. “We’ll find them, buddy. Brock is possessed by an alien. Kingpin doesn’t stand a chance.”

Peter shakes his head, his eyes filling with saltwater. “Venom’s gone, Tony. Dead.” Even as he says it, he can’t quite believe it.  _ It isn’t gone,  _ his mind insists.  _ It can’t die. _

For once, Tony doesn’t seem to know what to say. He rubs his knuckles into his palm and murmurs, “We were really worried about you for a minute there. How are you feeling?”

“Okay, but also awful,” Peter says honestly. His mouth is running on autopilot. All of him is. He isn’t here; he’s with Eddie wherever Kingpin’s got him. He’s with Venom, wishing there was a body to mourn. And…jeez, Parker, that’s heavy.

Peter scrubs his knuckles against his temples. Last night, they were all together. Last night they were fooling around and laughing. Now, they’re not. How is that possible? How is that fair?

Tony coughs. “I can call somebody, if you need somebody.”

Peter shakes his head. “I’m fine.” He shifts onto his other hip and pain sings up his left side. “Alright, maybe not  _ fine _ fine. I’ve been shot before and it didn’t hurt like it does now. What kind of bullet were they using?”

Tony taps at the tablet again. “Looks like a standard Smith and Wesson cartridge,” he says. He splays his fingers wide over the screen, sending the image of the bullet into a holographic projection so Peter can see.

“It was a pistol shot?” Peter says incredulously. He’d expected shotgun with a spray of bullets that would need to be carefully extracted. Or an assault rifle. Or a freaking  _ bazooka  _ given how bad he feels right now. “Really? A pistol?”

Tony seems to understand his train of thought, because he pulls up a diagram of Peter’s vitals. “I hear you, kid. This is pretty neat stuff actually. Medically speaking, that is. Looks like the bullet got you right in the heart.” Tony taps the center of the screen where Peter’s heart flexes on screen. “I’m no doctor, at least not a medical one. You know how many PhDs I have. But I’d love to run some tests.”

Peter can’t stand to see the pulsating glow of his beating heart on display. Eddie isn’t here. Venom isn’t here. None of this really matters.

“I can’t, Tony,” he says by way of explanation when Tony shoots him a concerned look. “Not right now. We have to find Eddie.”

Peter tries to stumble out of bed then, but his chest sings agony, and he’s hit with a sudden rush of blood to the head. As soon as he’s up, he’s flat on his back again.

Tony rubs his face, every moment looking older. “Yeah, you’re benched until next season, rookie.” He pats the end of Peter’s bed, near his feet. “I’m going to go make some calls. See if we can’t get some boots on the ground, so to speak. We’ll find him.”

Peter is already planning his escape as Tony retreats to the door. There’s a window behind him that he can fit through. If he crawls along the wall and ceiling, he can escape undetected. He’s trying to figure out how he’d get into their—his, Eddie’s, and Venom’s—apartment without the keys when Tony turns around.

“Oh, and kid?” Tony rests his hand on the IV drip. He taps a button that releases painkillers into Peter’s IV. He looks over Peter’s vitals and then taps the button again. “Stay put.”

Peter barely has time to give him the middle finger before he succumbs to the morphine haze. As his vision darkens, he thinks he sees Venom in the black. That’s morphine for you.

_ We have to get out of here,  _ is Peter’s last thought before he falls asleep.

 

\---

 

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO…

Eddie started chain smoking again in May when he discovered that Venom could just eat the cancer from his lungs. It drives Peter wild. Albeit for two very different reasons. Which he explains to them often and in depth.

“Well,” Peter explains to him one evening on the fire escape, “I don’t think it can really just literally  _ eat  _ the cancer from your tissue. I don’t think it works like that.”

“Hm,” Eddie just nods and inhales on his cigarette with such gusto that the paper crackles as it burns. The hot, smudgy chemical smell of tobacco smoke itches Peter’s nose.

“You know what I mean. It’s not a sure thing.”

“Hey,” Venom snaps. “I am a sure thing.”

Peter rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, okay. I didn’t mean you, V, I just meant…he could still get cancer.”

“He  _ won’t, _ ” Venom growls, emerging from Eddie’s shoulder now. “Cancer is scrumptious. Very rich. Very filling.” It smacks its lips. “I wouldn’t miss even a bit of it in Eddie. I’d lick the plate clean.”

And that, at last, gets a laugh out of Peter. Venom settles back inside of Eddie. It’s lazy whenever Eddie smokes, content to rest inside of him and savor the burn.

Eddie tilts his head up and exhales. Peter can see the bob and release of his adam’s apple under the thin skin of his throat. Eddie’s lips are pursed so that the smoke flows in a smooth stream upwards, above Peter’s air supply. Secondhand smoke is, of course, still a concern. But Peter figures he can fall fifty stories and walk it off, so what’s up, danger?

“So, that’s the first reason why you don’t want me smoking again. What’s the second?” Eddie surveys Peter from the corner of his eye, a surefire sign that they’re reading his thoughts right now. “Is it for the sake of your own lungs?”

Eddie leans forward to tap the ash off into an empty can of beer. He rests the end against the rim of aluminum, shifting the angle forward as if he might stamp it out.

“No,” Peter says. “That’s not it.”

With a sigh of relief, Eddie plucks it back up between his lips. “Well thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for that.” The filter crushes against the plush of his lower lip.

A thin rush of gray smoke leaks from the corner of Eddie’s mouth. Peter’s eyes follow the flow, face heating.

“Then what else bothers you?” Venom isn’t asking. It’s implying.

Peter swallows thickly. Just then, Eddie’s eyes dart over. Venom’s clued him into the secret. His eyes go dark. Slowly, like a big cat setting itself up for the pounce, Eddie takes a final drag on his cigarette, burning the last inch down to the filter. He stabs out his cigarette and pulls Peter into his lap.

“It’s hot,” Peter says aloud, because he knows they’ll like to hear it. “You’ve got a nice mouth. I’m not the only one who thinks it.”

“True,” Venom contributes.

Eddie knocks his forehead against Peter’s. “Jesus Christ,” Eddie says in his fondest, softest rumble.

He’s got his palm pressed between Peter’s legs and they must feel that he’s getting hard. With one arm slung around Peter’s hips (and Peter’s entire body wrapped around Eddie’s shoulders and waist), he stands. With Venom’s help, they perch Peter on the rail of the fire escape.

Peter casts a glance over his shoulder to the street below. They’re on the top floor of this apartment building. It’s a long way down. A shudder starts at the very base of his spine and crawls its way up. They know how much Peter loves tall buildings.

“I think you’ve got everybody fooled,” Eddie says, grinning at him. Venom sneaks a tendril up Peter’s pant leg, caressing the inside of his knee.

“Fooled how?” Peter gasps.

Eddies still got the bulge of Peter resting in his palm, fingers outstretched to rest between his spread cheeks. Just rubbing for now. Peter gasps and bucks up into the touch, wanting more.

“You’ve got a dark streak, Pete,” Eddie says.

“A death wish,” Venom agrees. It creeps higher up his thigh. It wriggles under Eddie’s palm and wraps around Peter’s cock. But once it’s spiraled around him, holding him erect to his belly, Venom does nothing. It just waits.

Teases. The both of them.

“Jeez, guys. Dark,” Peter says, pulling Eddie closer with his legs. “I’m more planning to never die.”

“Doesn’t seem possible,” Eddie agrees and bends him out over the railing. He’s got a free hand now, which he uses to peel Peter out of his sweatpants. He’s not wearing underwear beneath and when Venom and Eddie realize this, they give a low groan.

Laughing, Peter holds on by attaching his sticky fingers against Eddie’s chest. Then he lets the whole weight of his torso suspend by that one arm while Eddie and Venom fuck him nice and slow.

At first, it’s just Eddie tucked up inside Peter, working him with leisurely rolls of the hips that seem more for Eddie’s vanity than Peter’s enjoyment. Eddie watches himself move in and out of Peter with a loose, smug grin on his face.

Venom doesn’t move at all, and that makes Peter’s thighs quake and his palms itch. “God, guys, please…”

Eddie arches a brow at him. “Already?” he says, mockery barbing his fondness for Peter.  

Venom grumbles in agreement, but tightens its hold around Peter’s cock nonetheless. “What, the height and fucking in public wasn’t enough for you?”

“Semi-public,” Peter corrects, huffing. “And why’d you put out the cigarette?”

Eddie leans out with Peter and skims their lips together. “Didn’t want to blow smoke in your face, baby.”

_ Baby.  _ Eddie doesn’t call Peter that often, but his heart gives a pleasant squeeze at the affection. He drops his head back with a groan.

“You guys say you like it when I beg, then you mock me  _ and _ do nothing that I beg for. Why beg at all?”

“Because it pleases us,” Venom says, all crackly and superior. Like they own Peter, and thus may do to him whatever they so please.

“Maybe so,” Peter says boldly. “But what about what pleases me?”

Eddie snickers like Peter’s just the cleverest thing in the world. They go silent for a moment, and Peter gets the pang in his chest he always gets when he’s left out of the loop. Even if they are talking about him. Which they most definitely are.

“Cut him a break,” Eddie murmurs, this time for Peter to hear. “I can’t say no to a face like that.”

Peter rolls his eyes, and his sass is met with a gurgling chuckle from Venom. It likes it when he misbehaves. It likes him bad.

For his bad behavior, Venom presses the tip of a new tendril alongside Eddie’s cock, just testing the entrance. It must have been creeping up Peter’s leg this whole time, but he’s surprised by it. He jumps and moans at the same time, body caught between startled and terribly, terribly turned on.

“I can’t,” he moans, and tries to squirm away, but Eddie catches him by the thighs and holds him still. Meeting eyes with him, Peter gives a slanting smile and a nod. Even as he repeats, “I can’t.”

This is something they’ve talked about before, something they’ve agreed on. Eddie and Venom like to chase a little. And God help Peter, but he sure likes being chased.

A lot.

Eddie’s grip tightens on Peter’s thigh and he hauls him closer. “Yes, you can,” he says, comforting as anything. “Let us take care of you.”

Venom presses a quarter-inch in. The pressure is slim and unassuming, not so much bigger than Eddie, but then…

Venom presses in more, this time spiraling around Eddie’s cock so that each time he pushes in, Peter can feel the ridges and bumps of Venom curling around Eddie.

His eyes roll back in his head. Peter grinds his hips against them, head thrown back and hand splayed wide over Eddie’s chest. When he squeezes down around them, the girth sends hot and cold waves of panic-pleasure down his body.

He’s rattling off the hinges. He’s coming unglued.

When Peter lets out a long, warbling, “Fu-uh-uck me,” both Eddie and Venom twitch inside him. Then, Venom starts stroking ( _ stroking! _ ) Eddie’s cock inside ( _ inside! _ ) of Peter, shifting its tendrils back and forth over Eddie. And Christ,  _ Christ  _ it’s good.

Peter’s orgasm hits him so hard that his vision whites out and his body goes totally slack. He might have toppled off the edge of the fire escape and gone splat on the ground below them, if it weren’t for his palm stuck to Eddie’s sternum and Eddie’s arm curled low around his hip.

He comes up from the orgasm trembling, breathless, dizzy—as if he’s been drowning and they’ve just hauled him out from underwater. Peter clings to them, wraps his whole body around them.

This shifts their angle, and Peter tightens viselike around them. He can see the spark of wild pleasure in Eddie’s eyes the split-second before he’s coming inside him.  Peter cups his jaw in his hand, watching his face tighten then go slack. The push before the release.

“Hey,” Peter says when they’ve all caught their breath. “So, I’m okay if you want to keep smoking. Just so you know.”

“Are you?” Eddie says archly.

“Glad to have your permission,” Venom adds.

 

\---

 

MEANWHILE…

Peter wakes up and knows instantly that something is wrong. Well, not just one something, but many somethings. Peter sits up slowly onto his elbows and lists them:

  1. He’s definitely not in Tony’s lab anymore because
  2. it’s pitch black and,
  3. Peter is lying on a hard, damp surface that
  4. smells like sewage, and
  5. quite frankly, Peter _feels_ like sewage.



And that’s its own category of  _ wrong  _ with a whole list of subsections. Like article a) there’s a horrible pounding in his head, or article b) the waves of heat and chill that wash over Peter, sometimes at the same time, or even c) he’s fucking  _ famished. _

Peter manages to stumble to his feet with one thought on his mind:  _ Eat. Eat now. _

His eyes slowly adjust to the dark, and it’s only then he distantly recognizes that he’s underground. In the sewers, which—no duh—would explain the sewage smell. Regular Sherlock Holmes right here. Detective Pikachu move over.

Peter doesn’t have the brain power to question how he got from Tony’s lab to the sewers. All he knows is that he needs to get out of here to eat. Luckily, there’s a ladder just a few paces away that leads up and out.

He’s got his first hand on the rung when a voice warns,  _ Don’t. _

The voice is so clear, so striking, so separate from the tone of his own thoughts that Peter drops his hand immediately. He looks down to his arms and finds that the hairs there are raised. He just didn’t notice until now. The morphine still in his system must be messing with his spidey senses.

Something is above him. And Peter is already weak. He’ll have to find another way out.

His hunger is mounting and right now the rats skittering past him seem like a viable source of protein. If that’s not a signal that it’s cheeseburger time, he doesn’t know what is.  Peter is already creepy crawly Spider-Man, he doesn’t need to be King of the Rats, too.

_ Why would they make you king if you are going to eat them? _

“Rats are cannibals. They’ll see it as a power move,” Peter says. And then he adds, mumbling, “Great, now I’m talking to myself.”

Venom taught him months ago that the best way to navigate out of the sewers is to walk in the opposite direction of the sewage flow. That is, upstream. Peter does this now and, sure enough, it isn’t long before he finds another ladder leading out.

Again he ascends the ladder, and again the hair rises on his arms. Propelled by hunger, he keeps moving upward. “If I  _ can _ fight my way to a hotdog,” Peter murmurs to himself, “I’m  _ gonna  _ fight my way to a hotdog.” He’s got his hand pressed up against the manhole cover when the voice comes again.

_ Peter. Don’t. _

He can’t keep wandering the sewers with this hunger gnawing a hole into his gut. He just can’t.

_ Don’t. _

Peter does anyway.

Light explodes from above, and Peter flinches back away from it, startled. It’s still daytime, approaching evening. Peter must not have been in the sewers for too long…or maybe he spent the night here.

He waits for foot traffic to die down before slithering out onto the street. Once he’s out from under the manhole cover, he’s quick to dart into an alley. Careful all the while to not let anyone spot him.

Peter’s still in the spidey suit, but he’s not wearing a mask. If he’s going to have his identity revealed, he’d rather it not be while crawling out from the sewers. He’s careful, scans the streets meticulously.

No sign of trouble yet. Seems like the coast is clear.

_ I wouldn’t bet on it,  _ his instinct disagrees.

His stomach gives a deep rumble, clenching down around nothing. It feels as if it’s eating itself. Jesus Christ, Peter  _ must  _ have slept in the sewer if he’s this damn hungry.

How the hell did he get down there?

Peter scales the side of an apartment building, but the ascent is slow going. He’s shockingly dizzy, perhaps from hunger. Not to mention the healing bullet wound lanced directly through his  _ heart. _

Even Peter has to admit that’s a lot for him. He’s lucky to have survived this.

He’s only a few stories up the brick wall when the hair on his arms raises. It’s a slow raise, almost as if his own follicles are ashamed to admit it.  _ Sorry, Peter. _

One hand and both feet against the brick, Peter swivels out to see what’s come for him. Just in time to be slammed against the wall. Hard.

_ Told you to stay in the sewer. _

“There you are,” a familiar voice hisses in Peter’s ear. He’s totally glued to the side of the building, body suspended and entrapped in thick goo. “Remember us?”

“Hey, Carnage. Butch Cassidy. Look, this really isn’t a good time for me—”

Carnage creeps more of its sludge around Peter’s face and neck, pulling their faces closer together. Peter doesn’t bother trying to thrash away. It’s no use. He can only hope that Tony still has the tracker in this suit and is currently hunting him down. Peter takes a deep breath and waits for the sprawling guitar riff of “Thunderstruck.”

Well, either that or death by cannibalism.

“We thought we’d lost you when my friend dragged you from Stark’s lab into the sewers. But now we’ve found you.”

Ah, so that’s how Peter got down into the sewers. Something dragged him there. Something not Carnage. As if Peter needs more supervillains flocking around him right now.

“Where are your boyfriends anyway?” Carnage casts a look around for Venom. From this gesture alone, Peter senses genuine fear in the symbiote.

Peter gives a shrug. “I’m not sure I’d call Venom my boyfriend. It doesn’t really have a gender. You know, I’ve got a great pamphlet from Planned Parenthood if you—"

Carnage shoves Peter tighter up against the wall. The crush against his tender chest makes Peter whimper. The sound of Peter’s distress draws a horrible smile across Carnage’s face.

“You’re in bad shape, aren’t you, tasty spiderling?” Cletus Kasady’s face emerges from Carnage’s. He grins at Peter, open mouthed so he can visibly drag his tongue over his top row of teeth.

Fear spikes Peter’s heart rate. “I think I look pretty okay,” he quips. His mouth is on autopilot. He just needs to kill some time, delay Carnage as long as he can until backup gets here.

“Don’t worry,” Kasady says, crawling closer. “We’ll take you someplace where they’ll take  _ real  _ good care of you.”

“ _ No _ ,” Peter says, but he’s not really saying it. The voice seems to come from inside him unbidden. A deep rumble.

Kasady snarls. “What do you mean,  _ no _ ?”

“No means no,” Again, Peter doesn’t say it. His mouth does. But this time the voice is familiar. So familiar that Peter doesn’t know how he didn’t recognize the voice of his own boyfriend until just now.

Or, at least, the Venomous half of his boyfriends.

The blackness overtakes Peter like a warm, living shield. When Carnage’s maw comes snapping for his head, Peter thrusts out his arms by instinct. And from his arms spurt long, black limbs that shove Carnage off him completely.

And then they, Peter and Venom  _ together _ , are ripping at Carnage’s flesh. And they can  _ smell  _ the fear and the shock and the fury rising off of it. They manage to pry Carnage off themselves and wriggle a few paces away.

“Venom,” Peter enthuses from within it. He rubs his cheek against the bumpy texture of its interior, so relieved. “You’re alive.”

_ Sweetling,  _ Venom hums, a thrumming vibration all around and inside Peter. But that’s just about all that they have time for before Carnage is lunging for them again.

Fighting with Venom isn’t what Peter expected it would be. He thought it would be like fighting in the Iron Spider suit with Karen taking over some of the functions and Peter controlling others.

It’s not. It’s as if their consciousnesses are blended. When Carnage strikes at them with its claw, they make the collective decision to duck back and sweep a tentacle under its feet; Peter notices it’s off-balance when it lunges forward and Venom knows how to keep their own balance while they attack. 

“Hey,” Peter says, breathless with excitement. “You ever see this movie  _ Pacific Rim?  _ Not the sequel, that one’s garbage, but the one Guillermo Del Toro—”

“Is this really the time, young one?”

No, probably not.

A car pulls up, then a  _ Free candy!  _ kind of white van. It stops right in front of them and the back door slides open. The van momentarily distracts Peter, which distracts them both. Carnage uses their distraction to its advantage and sinks its teeth into Venom’s outstretched arm. It bites through Venom and its jaws clamp down on Peter’s flesh beneath.

Peter tries to jerk his arm back just as Venom attempts to dissolve their arm and shift away. It tries again, but Peter is panicking, frozen in fear. And who could blame him? His  _ whole arm  _ is inside Carnage’s mouth.

_ Peter, let me help!  _ Venom insists through the bond.  _ Peter! _

Carnage bites down, hard. Peter can feel its teeth slice through the thin layer of flesh. There’s a loud  _ SNAP,  _ and then it has taken off the whole hand with it.

Horror hollows Peter out. His scream is wild, distant to his own ears, and then quickly smothered by Venom’s mass.

It has already formed a new hand from the black mass, but Peter only has the stump beneath. And it hurts. It really hurts.

_ I can fix it,  _ Venom promises. And while this is somewhat soothing, the promise isn’t enough to tamp down the revulsion Peter feels when he sees Carnage swallow the appendage whole. Or the wild, instinctual panic of missing a limb.

Men in cheap suits and ski masks pour from the van. All of them have guns, but one has a tranq dart shooter.  _ Oh fuck,  _ Venom and Peter think in tandem.

They rip a claw along the back of Carnage’s neck, hoping to get to Kasady underneath. The henchman with the dart shooter takes this moment to fire, aiming for Venom and Peter. They dodge behind Carnage and the tranq dart hits Kasady’s exposed neck.

Carnage drops to the ground.

Venom and Peter waste no time. They hurdle up the side of the building towards the rooftops, where the henchmen can’t follow. Sometimes, it’s better to run and live. 

“Goddamn it, you missed,” a henchman hollers to the shooter as Venom and Peter flee.

“Get that thing in the van anyway,” another says. “Might as well bring it back to the lab.”

“The lab,” Peter repeats to Venom. And Venom gives an ominous shiver that ricochets down Peter’s vertebrae. 

They keep running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deranged ramblings and semi-pornographic musings can be found at my tumblr: [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/).


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A serious warning for this one: there will be a non-con and forced orgasm scene. The section in question begins with "Eddie is dreaming" and continues until the end of the chapter. Go ahead and skip it if you need to. Details in the end notes.
> 
> Also, I want y'all to know I wrote huge chunks of this chapter in the Vatican. Imagine me surrounded by priests while you read good ol' symbiote fucking.
> 
> My undying affection to [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) for beta-ing. This chapter in particular would be a mess without a beta. We are not worthy.

 

Waiting in that cell, in hours and hours of solitude, Eddie can’t help but torture himself with his memories. Especially those of Peter.

Learning Peter’s body had been a masterclass in human perfection. He’s not like any other human, a slim flexible frame tightly coiled with muscles. Skin smooth and flushed as polished marble, as if carved by a man in a rivalry with God.

And, worshipful, they discovered each sensitive inch of him, each tender place that sent his whole body shuddering. And each discovery delighted them more than the last.

Like the time they discovered that Peter loved his hands held during sex. Really loved it. More than he liked the nape of his neck nuzzled, or the dirty words that poured from their mouth, or even being pinned against the wall. Above all of that, Peter loved his hands held.

And it wasn’t Eddie who made the discovery, but Venom.

 

\---

 

SEVERAL YEARS AGO… 

On the night of Peter’s college graduation, his aunt takes them out for dinner and drinks. One glass of wine each turns into a bottle, turns into two, three, four bottles. Four bottles and a round of after dinner cocktails. The four of them walk home stumbling drunk, and it’s only because of Venom that they manage to navigate their way to Eddie’s apartment.

“Have a good night you two—three,” May corrects with a waggle of her eyebrows. Well, Eddie assumes that’s what the twitching of her brow is meant to be. She’s lost a lot of dexterity in her facial expressions from the alcohol.

Peter waves her off towards her own apartment with a garbled, “You too. Wait. No.” And Eddie, laughing, ushers him inside before Peter can confuse himself more.

The door isn’t even shut, and Peter is upon them. His mouth is slack and warm against Eddie’s and tastes of wine. When they break apartfrom the kiss, Peter’s lips are stained purple. He hums softly, a darling, needful sound. A rush of affection for him nearly capsizes Eddie and Venom.

They love him. They’re not ready to say it yet, but they do.

It’s a haphazard dance getting Peter into the bed. He keeps stopping midstep to ask for a kiss, to press his body against Eddie’s. Each time Eddie denies him, or even tries to move him forward, Peter whines.

“But I want it,” he says plaintively, as if this is good enough reason for anything. As he says it, he nearly topples over headfirst. Venom just barely manages to catch him with a tendril slung low around his waist.

Eventually, they just carry him to bed.

It’s a slow fuck. They rut against each other through their clothes—too lazy and uncoordinated to go for anything more adventurous. It’s the kind of sex that Eddie loves and Venom rarely has patience for unless there’s booze involved. Tonight, it is content to lie back on the mattress with Peter atop them.

Flushing and gorgeous, Peter rides Eddie’s thigh like he might die if he stops. Eddie slows him down, gripping him by the hips until Peter can’t move at all. Though he’s desperate for it, Eddie holds him very nearly still. He whines then, high and needy, and when Eddie still won’t let him go he starts thrashing.

Peter is strong, very strong, and Venom needs to lend a tentacle to keep him in place. As it wraps around his middle, Peter tucks his face into Eddie’s neck. His breath comes in hot pants against his neck, pooling in the wells of Eddie’s collarbone.

“Be patient,” Venom rumbles, but they all know that’s a taunt. Venom’s the least patient of the three of them. It just likes to see Peter suffer.

Eddie does too. Likes the way his thighs tremble and his shoulders bunch and his toes curl. He likes the way Peter fights them a little. Likes the push and pull. It’s more fun like this. Reminds him of the days they were Venom and Spider-Man. Foe and hero, clandestine fucking in the alley.

So when Peter beats his fist hopelessly against Eddie’s chest, he laughs.

Venom is less amused. Eddie can feel the surge of its protectiveness course like lava through their veins. In a flash, Venom’s claw lashes out and snatches Peter’s hand away from Eddie.

 _“_ Don’t hit him, _”_ it snarls, shaking Peter’s hand once for good measure.

And Peter? Peter has the gall to _moan._ It’s a strangled, tormented sound like it’s been wrenched up from his belly and torn through his esophagus. But it’s there. And it’s delicious. His spine arches, an agonized bow strung tight. The angle grinds his hips down and they can feel the dampness of his blurting cock soak through his jeans. And suddenly any drop of Venom’s protectiveness evaporates into sheer lust.

Venom flips them over, pinning Peter to the bed by his hands. Surprised by the sudden shift, Peter blinks up at them with dark eyes, his pupils blown wide. One claw surrounds Peter’s hand totally. One of Eddie’s hands holds the other down, their fingers interlocked.

Eddie flexes his fingers between Peter’s and Venom decides that’s the moment to finally give Peter what he wants: friction. It grinds Eddie’s thigh down against him, so hard it’s almost savage.

But Peter, God bless him, he loves it. He’s giving as good as he gets, hips bounding up to meet them with every stroke.

 _He’s a wanton thing_ , Venom projects to Eddie. And Eddie would have to agree. Peter is wild and reckless with his body in a way that suggests he doesn’t care if what he’s doing should be considered degrading. He doesn’t care if he looks like and sounds like an absolute slut humping dry against Eddie’s thigh.

He enjoys it. And they enjoy him.

 _Tell him something dirty,_ Venom suggests, egging Eddie’s desire on.

Eddie obeys. “You like this, don’t you?” He pushes Peter’s wrist down against the mattress. “Being held in place.”

Peter shakes his head, and it’s not like him to deny that he loves something. Especially as his hips roll up, evincing his pleasure.

Eddie’s brow furrows. He squeezes Peter’s hand tighter and forces Venom to still their hips. “Do you want us to stop, then?”

“Noo,” Peter whines, a long drawn out syllable.

 _You heard the boy,_ Venom crows and grinds down against Peter again. They can feel the hard shape of him jutting through his jeans. The quiver of his thighs is also palpable, a surefire sign that he’s close. _Nice and slow,_ Venom guides Eddie. _Don’t want to give him too much too soon._

The slowness, of course, drives impatient Peter wild. He bucks and shimmies, tries to free his hands from their grasp—or pretends to try; if he really wanted freedom his superior strength would guarantee it.

“Are you sure you don’t like it when we hold you down?” Eddie asks with a wry smile.

“No, I do, I just…” Peter is overwhelmed with his pleasure. He’s struggling to put together sentences and that stokes Eddie and Venom’s ego. Peter is clever, and they love stupefying him.

“Then what do you like, sweetheart?” The grumble of Eddie’s voice over _sweetheart_ mingles with Venom’s. The result is predatory, very nearly condescending.  It sends a shudder through Peter’s body. His thighs clamp down around Eddie’s. “Tell us,” they say, voice dipping lower. “We want to hear it.”

Peter shakes his head, a hot blush staining the apples of his cheeks. Venom wants to drink the blood from them like so much wine. Embarrassed, Peter turns his head to the side, his hair a hectic halo around his head.  A fallen angel, then. They delight in drawing bright things into the dark.

Venom stills again. “Tell us, little one,” it commands aloud, “Or you’ll never get what you want.”

Peter hesitates, but then his eyes drift back up to them. He swallows thickly and clenches his fingers. “My hands. I like my hands held.”

The answer catches them both by surprise, expecting filthier confessions from their little spiderling. Eddie’s heart gives an empathetic lurch. They sometimes forget that for all of Peter’s bravery, for all his recklessness, for all his _kinkiness,_ he’s a sweet one.

Venom shifts away its giant paw in favor of Eddie’s more delicate, fleshy hands. Eddie adjusts their hands so that his knuckles rest in the webs of Peter’s fingers. Not one to be left out, Venom creeps its tendrils around Peter’s wrists while Eddie stoops down to kiss him.

“Well then,” they say together, “We won’t let go.”

 

\---

 

MEANWHILE… 

Eddie is awoken from a dead sleep by the _chnk, chnk, chnk_ of the corridor lights turning on. Across their cells, he and Kasady exchange a glance. Kasady grins. Eddie grimaces in response.

Human interaction, beyond Kasady, has been limited to the two times a day meals are delivered to their cell. It hasn’t escaped Eddie’s notice that Kasady and Carnage are usually fed raw meat. Eddie’s been sustained by a diet of red beans and rice. On his own, this much food is passable. With Venom, it would have been abject starvation.

Fuck, how he misses Venom. He’d rather starve than be without it.

Their meals are always slid through the slots in their cell without so much as a nod. The lab coats and personnel around here never speak to Kasady or Eddie directly. They don’t see them as humans, so why would they talk to them?

Without speaking to him, three lab coats wheel an EMP generator past Eddie’s cell. Straight to Kasady’s. The trio huddles around the generator, attempting to get it into order. Low murmurs drift from their group, and Eddie can’t make out a single word. If Venom were here, they’d hear everything.

Kasady himself is listening in, his brow lowered in an uncharacteristic moment of solemnity. Eddie knows what they have planned for him and Carnage. Kasady seems to just now be putting it together.

Slowly, Kasady’s eyes creep towards Eddie.

Eddie doesn’t so much as glance at him. Instead, he makes direct eye contact with the smallest of the lab coats—a young man in glasses who can’t be more than a hundred pounds wet. His slim frame reminds Eddie of Peter. At the thought, Eddie’s expression darkens like a storm brewing. The young lab coat visibly flinches back. He presses closer to a taller lab coat fiddling with the generator, as if she can protect him.

The EMP generator starts up with a low whine that ascends to a higher pitch like an airplane preparing for takeoff. Kasady rolls onto his feet. The crawl of his straightening spine is strange and inhuman. It gets a shudder out of the lab coats.

“You know,” Kasady says, rocking the kinks out of his neck, “We think it’s very unfair that Professor Brock over here got a bed and we didn’t.”

“Yeah, and while you’re fetching him a bed, could you fetch me a symbiote?” Eddie contributes, almost inaudible below the hum of the EMP generator. “I seem to be missing mine.”

Kasady shoots him a smirk through the glass, as if they’re in on a joke together. Eddie ignores him completely. He’s almost looking forward to seeing Carnage ripped from Kasady’s body. He has it coming at this point.

The first blast of the EMP knocks Kasady flat on his back. But he’s up in an instant, this time surrounded by a snarling Carnage that claws and bites mindlessly against the glass.

Eddie murmurs, “Not gonna work,” but doubts Carnage can hear him over all that banshee screeching.

The lab coats batter them with another EMP pulse, this one at a higher voltage than the first. Carnage hits the ground hard. Learning from their mistake with Eddie and Venom on the docks, the lab coats hit them with it again. And again. Until Carnage is knocked out on the floor. It doesn’t even twitch.

Unconscious. Both Carnage and Kasady. The lucky bastards. Eddie was awake for the whole ordeal. He felt the moment that Venom left his body, as surely as he’d feel someone removing his spinal column.

They wait a few beats to be sure that Kasady and Carnage are really down. After a moment, the woman turns to the smallest lab coat and nods. “Go get it,” she tells him.

The smallest returns a few moments later with that bizarre metal cage. Smaller than the one they dropped around Eddie and Venom, but definitely the same kind of machine they used on him. Eddie inhales slowly.

“You know, I’d like to see you separated from your endocrine system, or maybe your circulatory system,” he says to the trio of lab coats. “See how you like it.”

Predictably, Eddie is ignored.

Maybe it’s because they’ve improved the technology, or maybe it’s because Kasady and Carnage’s bond isn’t very strong—no matter the reason, the separation process is quicker for Kasady and Carnage than it was for Eddie and Venom. The whole ordeal takes less than a minute.

Eddie watches in horrified fascination as Carnage’s flesh is lifted from Kasady’s body. For a moment, it is held suspended over Kasady—like a lover waiting to descend over its beloved—then there’s a bright flash of light and Carnage is a pathetic, mucousy mass on the floor. No longer a part of Kasady.

Eddie didn’t expect the rush of anger and pity that overwhelms him then. But it makes Eddie sick to see Kasady laid crumpled and empty on the floor. He turns his head and closes his eyes when the lab coats collect Carnage in a sealed container, leaving Kasady alone.

Alone like Eddie is alone.

 

\---

 

It’s been several days since Kasady was separated from Carnage. He looks like hell—gaunt and ashen like Eddie—but his mood hasn’t changed much. He’s still the same creepy asshole he’s always been. Already, Eddie views his proximity to Kasady as a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

“Wanna play a game?” Kasady asks into the silence.

“I’ve seen enough horror movies to know not to answer that.”

“I spy with my little eye…something red.”

After Carnage puked up part of Peter, the lab coats cleaned out Kasady’s cell. Even though they scrubbed the concrete with bleach, a brownish-red stain remains. A circle of dried blood big enough that if Peter curled up onto his side, he could fit inside of it.

Eddie’s heart sinks into despair just thinking about it. “Fuck off, Kasady.”

Kasady just coughs in response. Yesterday, he developed a dry, rattling cough. It’s already starting to get worse.

Because he’s a naturally curious guy, Eddie wonders what kinds of ailments Carnage held at bay for Kasady. Eddie’s own developing cancer has lain dormant in his body for years, occasionally gnawed off by Venom. Now he imagines it blooming inside him, eating him from the inside out.

“You’re wondering what’s wrong with me,” Kasady guesses.

Every hair on Eddie’s body stands upright. He doesn’t appreciate being read like this. Hell, he doesn’t appreciate Kasady so much as _looking_ at him, much less interpreting his thoughts.

“I’ll show you,” Kasady says, apathetic to the anger that rolls off Eddie in waves. From the corner of his eye, Eddie can see Kasady lift his shirt. “See this? This is where good ol’ Pops stabbed me.”

The reporter in Eddie can’t resist a story like that. He’s been cataloguing information since they got here. How many lab coats there are. The brand of tray they use to deliver meals. It’s how he keeps himself sane without Venom here: drafting an explosive exposé on…well, whatever operation is being run here. If he manages to escape, he’ll blow the whole thing wide open. Every bastard and asshole within sniffing distance of this shitshow is going down.

Slowly, Eddie’s attention slides to Kasady. He glances down at the healed knot of scar tissue between his ribs, just below his heart. At the sight of it, Eddie sneers, unamused.

“Your father died nearly a decade ago on death row. That’s too new. And…” Eddie leans in closer. “That’s a shiv wound.”

“Very good, detective. Write that one down.” He mimes scribbling into his palm, and the gesture is unhinged. “Never quite healed right. Big Ryker bastard. Got a little more than he bargained for after that.”

Eddie consults the catalogue of research he did on Kasady back when he thought he’d try to write a biography on the guy. Back when he thought he was _just_ a cannibalistic serial killer.

“Ryker Island Penitentiary,” he says, “That was after your stint in that specialized maximum prison…Ravencroft, right?”

“I was _born_ in Ravencroft,” Kasady snarls, but Eddie isn’t certain whether he is to take this as fact or some sort of metaphorical bragging.

Eddie hesitates, then asks the question that’s been eating at him. “I don’t think we’re in any state run facility. And I _know_ we’re not at Life Foundation. Are we…”

Kasady’s laugh rings between the cells and down the hall. It goes on for so long that Eddie thinks he may never stop—that is, until Kasady’s bum lungs catch up with him and he’s interrupted by his own coughing fit.

“No,” Kasady says once he’s calmed down from laughter and coughing both. “If we were at Ravencroft, you’d know it.”

Eddie’s heart sinks. He was almost hoping for Ravencroft; at least Ravencroft is in the public’s knowledge. A secret facility lowers their chances of rescue...and the chances were already subterranean.

“So,” Eddie says, voice laden with dread. “This is Kingpin’s lab.”

Kasady looks around his empty cell for dramatic effect, sighing. “The best that money can buy, I tell ya.”

Eddie opens his mouth to respond, but the lights in the hall come on before he has the chance to. _Chnk, chnk, chnk._

This time, only one lab coat approaches his cell. Eddie has seen her several times before, recognizes her by the white dreadlocks knotted like a bulbous octopus head on the top of her skull. She’s flanked by two burly men in tactical gear.

Kasady is too weak to fight. This entourage is for Eddie.

“Hiya, Doc,” Kasady says brightly as the woman unlocks the door to Eddie’s cell.

She doesn’t acknowledge Kasady or Eddie. The men following her enter the cell first and rush Eddie before he can try anything. Not that he was going to; Eddie’s not as weak as Kasady, but it’d be a close race. Despite his lack of resistance, they grab him by the arms and pin him to the cot.

“Sexy,” Kasady comments from the peanut gallery.

The doctor takes a phone out of her lab coat pocket—Eddie’s phone. His heart lurches forward at the sight of it. So close to being able to call someone to escape. What’s more, he’s got pictures of Peter in there, of Venom. He longs to see them.

“You’ve been getting calls from the university,” she explains in an overly calm tone. She could be a therapist with a voice like that. A bad one.

“Well, they tend to do that when professors don’t show for work. Classes don’t run themselves.”

She holds the phone before his face, waiting for the face ID scan to complete. Once the phone is unlocked she turns it towards herself and smiles. “Cute picture.” She turns it towards Eddie so he can see his home screen.

It’s a picture of him and Peter. Eddie’s pulling some god awful tough face, and Peter’s sweet expression is cracking up at his antics.

“Your boyfriend? You must miss him,” she says in a sickly sweet lilt, turning the phone back towards her. She starts tapping at the screen, typing something and something long. “Well, now he won’t worry, and neither will your employer.”

Eddie has to turn his face away to hide from the hot surge of anger he feels towards the woman. She buzzes around his cell the most out of the lab coats, and prolonged proximity has led him to resent her.

“Oh, buy a brush,” he snarks, referring to the tangle of unkempt hair she’s piled on top of her head.

To her credit, she’s unfazed by the insult. She nods to the men pinning Eddie to the cot.

They bind him to the frame with buckled leather straps reminiscent of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest._ Eddie doesn’t see any point in them; he doesn’t plan to fight. Everything worth fighting for has been stripped from him. He’s more Chief than Randle these days.

A metal box is wheeled in and Eddie’s stomach clenches at the sight of it. Through a glass pane on the side, he can see Carnage—formless and squirming—inside.

Kasady sees it too, because suddenly he’s got his whole body pressed against the glass between their cells. He says nothing, does nothing, just breathes great round circles of steam onto the glass.

The doctor injects a syringe needle into the box through a port. As she decompresses the syringe, it fills with oozy red goop, it fills with Carnage.

Eddie catches on quick. “What the fuck,” he says and then says it again, “What the _fuck_ ?” because it seems like the only reasonable thing to say in a situation like this. “You know, just because Venom and I were compatible, _doesn’t_ mean Carnage and I will be.”

“It’s a symbiote, Mr. Brock—”

“Professor.”

This interruption seems to genuinely confuse the doctor. She blinks at him. “Excuse me?”

“I’m a professor. It’s Professor Brock.”

The doctor sighs, and Eddie gets a kick out of her frustration with him. “As I was saying. It’s a symbiote. It has the exact same molecular structure as your previous symbiote, and thus should be just as compatible to your system as—”

Kasady slams against the glass. The smudge of blood at his temple suggests it wasn’t his hands he banged against the glass, but his head. “He can’t _handle_ Carnage.”

The doctor presses her fingers to her temples. They’re wearing her down.

Eddie grins at her. “That’s what you get for trying to monologue.”

“A mistake I won’t make again,” she says crisply and presses her thumb to the delicate skin inside Eddie’s elbow. Eddie can feel his pulse against her grip, steady and unwavering despite his dread. He closes his eyes, thinking of Venom.

She sinks the needle in and compresses the plunger.

She and the goon squad retreat from the room, leaving Eddie strapped to the bed. It’s a small dosage of Carnage, and symbiotes take a while to manifest in their hosts. All Eddie can do is lean back and wait.

Kasady thumps his head against the glass, arrhythmic and unhinged. Eddie falls asleep to the sound.

 

\---

 

Eddie is dreaming. Or, almost dreaming. He knows he’s still at the lab, but can’t quite remember why he was so distressed about it. Something about being alone, but he’s not alone anymore, is he?

 _You’re not,_ a slinking symbiote voice rumbles in his ear.

Eddie feels overfull. Bursting at every seam. Even his tongue feels swollen in his mouth, his eyes too big for their sockets, his heart too soaked in blood.

 _And what a tasty heart it is,_ the symbiote sighs. It flexes Eddie’s heart for him, gushing an excess of blood through his veins that is quickly sucked dry. It does this again and again until Eddie is woozy.

He can feel something slithering through his system, almost as if it’s on the prowl. Hunting for the most delectable parts of him. There’s a pang in his liver, a sting in his intestines. Then, the symbiote turns its attention lower. To his groin.

 _Tasty here, too,_ it croons. And, without feeling the familiar stir of arousal in his belly, Eddie’s cock begins to thicken between his legs.

It swells fatter and fatter as if of its own volition and Eddie’s brow knits in consternation. It feels as if something is coaxing it to hardness from the inside, and if he tries to push it away, he can’t because it’s inside him. Oh my god, _it is inside of him._

The symbiote chuckles, dark and ugly. _Can’t get rid of me, Eddie. I am you, now._

Eddie tries to wake up, but Carnage—and he knows it’s Carnage now, recognizes the sick feeling in his belly and the creep up his spine—Carnage won’t let him open his eyes. It keeps pushing him further and further down into unconsciousness, all the while exploring his body from the inside. Eddie can’t remember what it’s like to control his body; it feels so far away.

_I wonder what your semen tastes like._

_Fuck off,_ Eddie thinks. He means to say it, but his tongue is somewhere else.

_Don’t mind if I do..._

Eddie’s testicles tighten like they do when he’s about to come. A wild, out of control feeling. Eddie _loathes_ being out of control. Especially of his own fucking body. _No_ , he thinks, desperately trying to stave off the orgasm. _No!_ A slow, circling pressure is applied to his prostate, milking him and drawing his balls in tighter. _No, fuck no!_

But he doesn’t come. Not really. The sensation is close to an orgasm, has all the release of pressure and the pulsation in his balls, but none of the euphoria. None of the pleasure. His cock wilts, and the orgasm with it.

With sick realization, it dawns on Eddie that Carnage is drinking his semen from the inside.

 _Yum,_ the symbiote declares when it’s finished, when Eddie is sucked dry. _Let’s do that again._

Eddie begins to fatten up again, but this time he’s fighting. This time, he doesn’t focus on preventing himself from getting erect.

This time, he focuses on getting Carnage the fuck out of his body.

Carnage only manages to get him half erect before Eddie jerks back into consciousness. He’s sweating and panting, thrashing against his bindings. There’s only a fraction of Carnage inside him. They aren’t fully bonded. He can do this. He can get it out. The veins in his temple bulge, his stomach roils, Carnage screams out in agony.

One moment it is inside him, the next he’s vomited it up onto the cell floor. Instantly, he feels better now that Carnage is out of him. More in control, more like himself.

“Fascinating,” a woman says from outside his cell. There’s a murmur off agreement from her cohort. “Write that down.”

Eddie groans and rolls his head up. In the corridor, he has an audience of lab coats. Next door, Kasady is watching with a curling grimace. Whether he looks on with jealousy, sympathy, or amusement, Eddie can’t tell.

“Show’s over,” Eddie rasps, but with none of the bite he intended. His face is flushed, embarrassed by the display Carnage has made of him.

The lab coats come in to collect the withered mass of Carnage that Eddie has expelled. They don’t release him from the cuffs, just shuffle out with their sample.

The doctor smiles at him. And then, in her sweetest, most insidious voice she says, “Oh, no. Nothing is over, _Professor_ Brock. We’re just getting started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Eddie is infected by Carnage. It milks his prostate and forces him to have an orgasm. Pretty gross.
> 
> Thanks y'all for reading this trash heap of a series. 
> 
> Prayers and concern for my immortal soul can be directed to my tumblr: [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this chapter: Peter has some troubling thoughts that verge on suicidal ideation, but they never quite reach that level.
> 
> All my gratitude to [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) for beta-ing even my most illegible passages.

“Venom,” Peter whimpers once it has dragged them back down into the safety of the sewers. The mass of Venom disintegrates around him, and he’s left cradling the stump of his arm to his chest. It’s no longer bleeding, but his entire arm is a hot rod of agony.

His hand. His hand is gone. Panic comes in cold waves over Peter’s feverish body. He can’t focus, he can’t think.

 _I know, baby, I know._ A tendril passes over Peter’s forehead, pushing the hair from his brow.

 _“_ It hurts.” Peter’s voice sounds small to his own ears, and distant. It feels as if the singular sensation of his arm has consumed his whole world. It’s just this now, it’s just pain.

_I know, baby, give me a second. I can fix it._

At first, nothing happens, then Peter’s arm is flooded with a tingling rush that shoots all the way from his spine down to his severed forearm. The jagged skin begins to grow back, the splintered bone mends then extends.

This, too, hurts. But it hurts like resetting a bone. It hurts like healing.

Mouth agape, Peter watches as Venom reconstructs his hand from scratch. When it is finished, Peter’s hand feels raw. Sunburned almost, but no longer painful. He flexes his fingers and turns his wrist. It feels good. Better than good. He sighs in relief, no longer in pain.

There used to be a scar on the back of his hand from where he burned himself on an oven rack. It’s gone now. Brand new skin.

“How did you…?” Peter trails off, unable to articulate his gratitude. His awe. He doesn’t need to; Venom knows without him needing to say it.

 _I ate some of your appendix,_ Venom apologizes. _Once we get something else to eat, I’ll be able to heal it, too._

Peter laughs. He strokes his fingertips over the new skin, longing to embrace Venom. To be held in the safe enclosure of its arms again.

 _Why didn’t you just say so?_ Venom rumbles, then it blooms from Peter’s shoulders. Giant, warm, all encompassing, its black mass wraps around Peter and squeezes.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Peter gasps, weak with gratitude. He rests his cheek against Venom’s woven texture. “I thought…I thought…”

 _We know,_ Venom hums, then corrects, mournfully, _I know._

It sobs, woeful. Alone.

 _Eddie_.

Peter’s heart aches with it. Then the heartache isn’t just his, isn’t just Venom’s, but something that they share. And yes, their collective heartache is bigger. Yes, it hurts more.

But it’s also better. Peter can’t explain how.

“We’ll find him,” he promises it. “No matter what, we’ll find him.”

 

\---

 

The goons that abducted Carnage said they were taking it to a lab, which narrows down their options significantly. There’s Oscorp’s lab in Manhattan, Ravencroft Institute upstate, and whatever is left of the Life Foundation in San Francisco.

They start with Oscorp, creeping through the vents. Peter is unused to Venom’s massive stature, so it shrinks down for him. It even sprouts four extra limbs so that they can crawl along like a spider. Peter would have fun with this new dexterity, but he only feels frustration when their search of Oscorp labs yields nothing.

(Well, not _nothing._ Oscorps is trying to develop the science to regenerate limbs and they’re using humans as test subjects. Fucked up stuff. Peter almost derails the rescue mission with a new rescue mission, but Venom keeps his focus on Eddie. _Eddie first,_ it insists, but promises to return.)

So, that leaves Ravencroft.

Before they leave, they need to stop by the apartment so that Peter can pick up a spare spidey-mask, civilian clothes, and his cell phone.

Travelling long distances used to be quick for Venom and Spider-Man, as they move at roughly the same pace with Peter swinging and Venom running on all fours. But now that they’re bonded, it’s slower going. They have different ideas of what’s faster, and it turns out that Venom hates the nauseating undulations of web-swinging. The motion disorients it. Meanwhile, Peter can’t get the hang of running on all fours. Crawling, yes, great, natural. But he can’t get the bounding rhythm of back legs surpassing front arms in a dead sprint.

So, yeah, they’ll need to call an Uber.

It’s strange to re-enter the apartment now that Eddie is gone. There’s still a half-full bottle of beer on the kitchen counter that Eddie didn’t quite finish. Ungraded papers on the coffee table. Eddie’s shoes next to the door. They left it thinking that they’d return soon.

It makes both Peter and Venom ache.

But there’s no time to mope. Peter retrieves his mask with no problem, but he realizes with a slap to the forehead that his cellphone is still in his backpack…which is with Tony.

 _Can he not help?_ Venom grumbles, and Peter can feel its annoyance with him. Every moment that they aren’t actively looking for Eddie, he is in grave danger. They’re wasting time.

Peter knows that. He does! He beats a fist against his temple, thinking.

“Tony will want to run tests on us,” Peter explains. “He’ll worry I won’t survive the bond.” Even though he anticipated Venom’s indignation, the bristle still scrubs him raw from the inside. He winces.

“I know, I know,” Peter says between gritted teeth; Venom’s outrage is now his own and he’s not used to feeling so much at once. “But no cell phone means no Uber. I don’t know what else to do.”

 _Don’t be stupid. Use Eddie’s old phone,_ Venom snipes with none of the usual tenderness it reserves for Peter.

And Peter’s hurt rings through the bond. At first, Venom is too callous and anxious about Eddie to feel any remorse. But when Peter admits tentatively, “I don’t know where it is…” Venom softens with a sigh.

It forms long, drooping tendrils from Peter’s waist and cradles his cheeks between humanoid hands—the exact same shape and size as Eddie’s. Despite himself, Peter giggles a little, feeling distinctly like he’s holding his own face.

 _I’m sorry, sweetling._ Venom’s affection settles like honey in Peter’s neuroreceptors. His brain buzzes pleasantly. He feels loved. _It’s not your fault. Let me show you._

Eddie has a box of discarded electronics and miscellaneous gadgets under his side of the bed. Peter roots out his old phone and an iPod nano from the stone ages. Both are dead, so he charges them with the knot of power cords he found in the box.

While he waits for them to power up, he changes into some normal clothes. Peter puts on his own jeans, but opts for Eddie’s _San Francisco Giants_ hoodie and the denim jacket he gave Peter when they were still Spider-Man and Venom. Hero and foe.

The pocket in the denim jacket is still singed from when he tried to burn receipts to escape Carnage. There’s a coffee stain near the cuff from when Peter was running late for class.

Peter misses those days.

Like he did all those years ago, Peter tucks his nose into the collar. Eddie’s scent, as faded as it is, still lingers in the fabric. Cigarettes and newspaper ink and dirty city smell. Peter longs for Eddie.

 _He loves you,_ Venom comforts, rubbing a tendril against Peter’s jaw. And Peter can feel the residual of Eddie’s love mirrored through Venom.

“He loves us both,” Peter says.

They both look back to the phone. It hasn’t turned on yet. Eddie used to joke that dead phones liked to “take some ‘me’ time” before turning back on. Peter never laughed at the joke, but if they get Eddie back, he’ll laugh at all of his jokes. Even the puns. Especially the puns.

“I could research Ravencroft while we wait?” Peter suggests anxiously. He doesn’t want Venom to think that he’s slowing them down, that he isn’t as serious about getting Eddie back as Venom is.

His mind is racing at hundred miles a minute.

Thoughts rush through his brain quicker than he can process them. As a result, he can’t think about anything. He can’t _feel_ anything but mania. The sun is rising in the bedroom window. He hasn’t slept all night and he has to get going. He has to move. He has to find Eddie. _They_ have to find Eddie. And what if he doesn’t? What if he fails them? Will Venom ever forgive him? Will it leave him? Bond with someone else? What if Eddie is _dead_ and—

“Sweetheart,” Venom says aloud.

That’s Eddie’s endearment for Peter. With Venom, Peter is always “little one” or even “sweetling” and “baby.” With Eddie, he’s “sweetheart.” Peter’s brain cools, just a little.

Venom senses the effect on Peter, so it says again, “Sweetheart.” And then adds, with a chuckle, “Relax. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Peter laughs a little, shakily. “What’s it feel like to have such a neurotic host?”

Venom hums. “Bizarre to care so much. When I’m with Eddie, we don’t give a fuck.” It nudges a tendril against Peter’s cheek, a fond chuff. “But I’m a lot stupider with Eddie, too. It’s a trade off.”

Peter laughs again and rubs his eyes. They itch. “I’m tired, Venom.”

“I know.” It hums, just once. “I also know you can’t sleep.”

“No, probably not.” Peter sits down on the edge of the bed. That feels good, so he kicks up his feet and lies down. He shoots a web to hit the overhead lights and Venom extends a tendril to turn on a dimmer lamp.

The phone is still dark, happily charging away.

Peter closes his eyes, but the moment he does, the thoughts start racing through again. He’s on Eddie’s side of the bed and, wherever he is, Eddie certainly isn’t sleeping. Shit. How could Peter have lost him? Why didn’t he get up off the fucking ground and get him?

And, hell, why can’t Peter just figure out how to run with Venom? Why is his bond with it so much less fluid than Eddie’s? They could do the spider leg thing again and just _run_ to Ravencroft. Couldn’t they? Not the most inconspicuous way to travel, but it’s early morning. Maybe nobody would notice. They could do it.

Except, maybe they couldn’t. Peter isn’t as well-suited for Venom as Eddie is. They’re out of sync. That’s why Peter lost his hand. Why they aren’t on route to find Eddie right now. If Peter could just get with the program, maybe they would have found Eddie. Maybe he’d be home with them. God _damn_ it, Peter, why can’t he just—

“My goodness,” Venom says quietly. “So, that’s why you have a death wish.”

Peter opens his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Venom sprouts a warm bed of tendrils underneath Peter, lifting him up into its pliant, all-encompassing hold. Peter’s legs and arms float out in from of him, his head drops back into the rolling surface of Venom. He sighs.

“You’re careless with yourself, Peter, always have been,” Venom hums. And when it feels Peter’s indignation, it continues, “Eddie and I have always wondered about it. Now I know why. Why you love putting your life in danger so much.”

“Why?” Peter chokes out, eyes misting. But he already knows.

“Because you hate yourself.”

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. He’s been thoroughly seen. “I don’t, I just…You don’t blame me for losing Eddie?”

“No,” Venom says simply. It passes a tendril over the high arch of Peter’s cheek bone, rubbing away the wetness.

Peter turns over into the mass of Venom. It’s formed a bed of tentacles below him, slowly shifting over each other like a pit of large snakes. It should be creepy. Peter only finds it comforting.

“This is embarrassing,” he says. “You’re going to tell Eddie all about this when we get him back, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” Venom admits, and Peter groans. “But he’ll understand. Eddie hates himself, too.”

Peter smiles a little. “Yeah, I know.”

“And so you know I hate myself,” Venom sighs. “Except when I’m also Eddie.” It pauses. “And now when I’m also you.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It’s not.”

Peter nods. He knows this, too. He rubs his cheek against Venom, sinks his arms down between the tentacles. Venom has enlarged itself to an indulgent size, spilling off the sides of the bed.

White light shines from the floor beside the bed. The phone has turned on, finally. But they won’t be able to take it off the charger for a while. These old Samsungs charge so goddamned slowly.

“Want to fuck?” Venom says before Peter can start up the self-loathing spiral again.

He laughs, incredulous. “I don’t think we have time.”

Venom hums, curling a tendril around Peter’s thigh just under the swell of his ass. It rubs back and forth over the crease. Peter shifts.

“Bonded sex is different. You’ll see. The first time Eddie and I had sex, he didn’t last five minutes.” Venom presses between Peter’s legs, spreading them wide. “Do we have five minutes?”

Peter nods, gulping. “Yeah, okay. We have five minutes.”

Venom eases Peter out of his clothes. To unbutton his jeans and peel out of the spidey-suit, Venom uses Peter’s fingers for their muscle memory. For everything else, it uses its tendrils. As it undresses him, it turns him over onto his back again. Naked, Peter shivers. Until he starts to warm up from the inside.

“Like that?” Venom hums. “Sped up your metabolism a little. Heats you up.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.” Peter takes a tentacle into his arms and holds onto it. He’s not used to having nothing to grasp onto. “Cool.”

“What else, what else…” it muses. “Ah, Eddie likes this.”

Peter’s nipples tighten suddenly as if ice has been applied to them. He squeals and tries to press his palms to the sensitive peaks, but Venom holds his arms back. It chuckles softly and Peter can feel how much his squirming pleases it.

It’s strange, being turned on by himself. And nice.

A long, gently pointed tongue unfurls from somewhere behind Peter’s shoulder. Prehensile, it slithers down Peter’s chest, curling around the pinkened nub. Venom twines tendrils around Peter’s ankles, holding him in place so he can’t rut up against the tentacle slowly curling around his cock. Hot and slick and _tight_. Peter knocks his head back, gasping and squeezing his eyes shut.

But he can still see himself from Venom’s point of view and, _Fuck,_ that’s new. New to see the long, flat line of his body splayed out and played with. Very new with Venom’s thoughts flowing over his brain. Fond adorations like, _Such smooth skin. Love the cream of his thighs._ And filthy musing like, _Can’t wait until he tastes himself._

Peter whimpers, embarrassed and so, so turned on.

 _Knew you love it when we humiliate you,_ Venom chuckles, and Peter can feel the rumble of its amusement through his own lungs. _Makes sense that we’d be compatible for a bond. I’ve always known you, Peter._

It rubs between Peter’s cheeks, parting them just enough to skim over his hole. The tip of its tongue flicks over Peter’s nipple. From the inside, the muscles around his prostate tighten and spasm. Holy shit, holy shit.

With a shout, Peter comes.

But Venom isn’t done with him yet. It forces him to stop coming mid-orgasm, leaving him half hard and aching for it. He thrashes, begs, “Please, please, please,” but quiets the moment Venom sinks a tentacle into him, fat and warm and filling. Peter pants, fingers flexing into his palm. His empty palm.

“Venom,” he whines, a half desperate sound, and he doesn’t know how to ask for exactly what he wants.

But he doesn’t need to because Venom just _knows_. It forms hands for him and locks their fingers together. Peter comes again and he feels his own orgasm resound through Venom. Their pleasure crashes together, two waves clapping into a high peak. Peter’s come splashes over his stomach and Venom drags its tongue through the puddle that pools in his concave stomach.

Peter tastes salt in his own mouth. And in Venom’s.

“Woah,” he gasps. His vision is blurry, like everything has been knocked slightly to the left. Colors are faded. He shakes his head. Blinks a few times. The world comes into view. “Woah.”

_Feel better?_

“Much.” He glances over to the phone. Half charged. That’s enough; Peter has a portable battery. “I think we can head out now.”

 

\---

 

During the long Uber drive upstate, Peter listens to Eddie’s iPod nano. He has an embarrassing amount of Eminem and early 2000s alt-punk on it, but Peter loves every second of electric bass. Though he knows he shouldn’t, he snoops through Eddie’s old phone. Venom, god bless its morality crapshoot, doesn’t raise any objections. It’s content to just watch as Peter scrolls through old selfies that pre-date their relationship with Peter.

 _Some of these are before me, too,_ Venom hums when Peter gets as far back as the San Francisco years.

Peter stops scrolling when he hits a picture of Eddie kissing a blonde woman’s cheek. She’s pretty, Eddie’s type of pretty, and fashionably dressed in black.

 _That’s Anne,_ Venom reminds Peter.

Its affection for her seeps under Peter’s skin. He shakes it off and whispers, “Eddie’s ex-fiancée, right?”

The Uber driver glances back at them, brow lifted. Peter gestures to his headphones and says, “Sorry. Phone call.”

The Uber driver shrugs and turns his attention back to the road.

 _Mhm,_ Venom affirms once they’re ignored again. _I bonded with her, too. Though we were not nearly as compatible as you and me. It was only for a few hours._

Peter ignores the irrational spike of jealousy that picks up his heart rate. Venom ignores it too, which Peter is grateful for. Eddie is a man in his forties, he’s bound to have had other serious relationships. Anne was a lifetime ago.

Peter works his jaw, considering Anne’s picture for a moment. There are laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. She’s Eddie’s age. “Did things end okay between them?”

_A little rocky overall, but more or less. She’s married to a doctor now._

Peter swipes over to Eddie’s contacts and finds her entry. Taking a deep breath, he hits the call button. It only takes a few rings before a woman’s voice answers. A light Californian drawl, crisp like white wine.

“Eddie? Eddie Brock?”

“Uh,” Peter says, fidgeting with his headphone cord, “Kind of.”

 _What are you doing?_ Venom’s confusion mingles with Peter’s phone anxiety. It’s not helpful.

He ignores it. “My name is Peter and I’m, uh, I’m Eddie’s boyfriend. Is this Anne?”

There’s a beat of silence on the other end, and then the woman slowly sucks air between her teeth. “This is Anne,” she says. “How much trouble is Eddie in now?”

“A lot,” Peter admits, his voice shaking.

At the quiver in Peter’s tone, Anne’s instantly softens. “How can I help?”

Peter’s relief rises with Venom’s. _This is why we liked her,_ Venom thinks. Peter nods. He’s glad to have another ally, someone who knows Eddie personally. Who cares about him.

“Um, are you still in San Francisco?”

“I am.”

“Do you know where the Life Foundation used to be?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” There’s a rustle on the other end of the line, and Anne says something to someone else in the room. “It’s pretty much abandoned now.”

“I think Eddie might be…held up there.”

Anne’s voice slides low with suspicion. “How long have you been dating Eddie?”

“A few years. I know about…” Peter’s eyes flicker to the Uber driver, “…all of _it._ But _it_ is not with Eddie right now. He’s alone. And...he’s in danger.”

“What?” Anne’s alarm makes Peter feel better. She gets how big a deal this is. “Where’s Venom?”

“It’s…with me.”

Silence. After a few moments of awkward breathing on the line, Peter clears his throat. Anne inhales sharply, as if just now waking up. “Hey, Venom,” she says at last. “How are you doing?”

Venom grumbles low in Peter’s throat and murmurs, “We’ve been better.”

The Uber driver looks back to them with wide eyes, and Peter fakes a cough attack until he looks away. _Not very subtle, dude,_ he thinks to Venom.

_I’m not very subtle._

“Okay,” Anne says over Peter’s fake coughing. “I’ll leave work now to look around the old Life Foundation building. I’ll call you guys when I’m there. This number okay?”

“Thank you, Anne.”

“No problem. It takes a whole team to keep Eddie alive.”

Peter smiles. “Yeah, apparently.”

“And, Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Anne. Be careful, okay?”

“I’d say the same to you,” Anne says warmly, and Peter can hear the jingle of her car keys through the phone. She’s on the move. “But I’m guessing you won’t listen.”

Peter’s brow furrows. “Why’s that?”

“You’re with Venom, and in a steady relationship with Eddie. My guess is if you’re making it work with both of them, you’re just as rash as they are.”

“Yeah, okay. You got me there.” Peter rubs the back of his neck, blushing. “Hey, you’re pretty smart.”

Anne snorts. “Not smart enough to stay away from this wreck. We’ll be in touch, Peter.”

There phone rustles like she’s about to hang up, then she picks it back up again. “Speaking of smart...Did you see who got him? Who is left of the Life Foundation?”

Peter blinks. He hadn’t thought about it until now. Neither of them had. “A mobster names Kingpin.  He, uh, I...He and I…” Peter pauses, dangerously on the verge of telling her about Spider-Man for no pertinent reason. “Huh, maybe he sold Eddie to the highest bidder?”

“Hm,” Anne says, but her voice sounds like Pepper Potts’ when she’s very clearly not buying it. “We’ll be in touch,” she repeats and hangs up.

The Uber driver is resolutely not staring at Peter, eyes huge and glued on the road ahead.

 

\---

 

In Spider-Man’s world, when a facility has the word “institute” in the title, and the “institute” part of the title replaces the former “asylum” part of the title...that is a bad sign. A very, very bad sign.

For example, Ravencroft Institute (formerly named Ravencroft Asylum) ends up being a clusterfuck...

A very, very bad clusterfuck.

And it’s not even worth it: Venom can sense within moments of breaking into the Institute-formerly-known-as-Asylum that Eddie isn’t there.

They drop down through the gates to get a better look at the ~~cell block~~ patient ward. The moment Peter’s feet hit the floor, Venom knows Eddie isn’t being held here. _I can’t sense him, Peter._

“Spider-Man?” someone says behind them. And Peter turns around, cringing to find himself facing a man who sometimes goes as Clayface—no, that’s a Batman villain—Sandman.

And, because Peter has the worst luck in the world, once Sandman sees him all the other supervillains held in Ravencroft see him. All the supervillains that Spider-Man landed in Ravencroft do, anyway.

And that, of course, triggers a massive jailbreak that sends all of Spider-Man’s nemeses chasing after them.

It’s not actually that bad; Peter is fast and Venom is brutal. They manage okay for a while and it’s nice to be able to match Clayface— _Sandman_ —blow for blow. Each time Sandman blasts them with a dust storm, Venom simply fades away and returns the favor. Fighting with Venom is a rush of power akin to the first time Peter explored his Spider-Man abilities. They’re not perfectly in sync, not the graceful tandem of Eddie and Venom. But they’re still pretty coordinated together.

So, it’s not that bad and actually pretty cool.

Well, it’s not that bad until some of the symbiote patients recognize Venom. Then they’re being pinned to the wall by another symbiote that calls itself Mania, and it _really_ hates Venom. It also really wants to _eat_ Venom, and Peter can’t believe how many times he’s been threatened with cannibalism this week.

So, yeah. Things escalate quickly when Spider-Man and Venom team up.

 _Sweetling, I don’t mean to alarm you,_ Venom says as Mania rips off a mouthful of Venom’s thigh. It’s surrounded Peter completely now in a protective mass. _But this is actually fairly dire._

Peter only shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll be here soon.”

_He? Who is—_

There’s a tremendous explosion that bursts open the ceiling and then “Back in Black” blares on the institute’s loudspeakers. Mania is fried off of them with two hits of a canon blaster and all the supervillains scatter away from Peter and Venom.

“Tony Stark,” Peter says the same moment Venom grumbles, _This asshole._

“Hey there, Monster Mash. You and the professor are about to make some kid from Queens very happy.” Tony comes to a landing before Venom, slow fading AC/DC rather than shutting it off alltogether. “This is basically a Make-A-Wish moment for you two. Does that make me Walt Disney?”

“Tony…” Venom peels its head back from Peter’s face. “I’m in my twenties. And Make-A-Wish wouldn’t sponsor this. Symbiotes aren’t affiliated with Disney.”

Tony is probably glad the visor on his helmet is still down so they can’t see his shocked expression. He staggers back at the sight of Peter encased in Venom. “Peter?” he says, and then he does flip up his visor and his expression isn’t shocked at all but viciously pissed off.

Peter withers. He’s upset Iron Dad.

“Do you have any, _any_ idea—” Tony lifts up his pinched fingers, a tight and quaking gesture. “Even an _iota_ of an _inkling_ of an idea how worried I’ve been about you?

Tony advances towards them, mechanical suit whirring and thudding on the concrete floor. Peter winces back, feeling small.

“One moment, you’re in my lab, doped up on morphine, and then you sneak out to hook up with your boyfriend like it’s senior year prom without so much as calling—”

_Enough._

Venom slams two black trunks into Tony’s chest. It catches him by surprise and launches his body clear across the room and into the bars of a cell.

Peter gasps. So much drama. “Venom, it’s fine. He’s just—”

_Making you feel bad._

Well, yeah.

“We are looking for Eddie,” Venom growls, addressing Tony now. “Peter didn’t have time for you. I know that’s a new concept for you.”

“Well,” Tony says, standing and brushing himself off. “That was rude. But moving right along: if you were looking for Eddie, you should have come to me first.”

The Iron Man suit cracks open, and he steps out of it. Tony reaches into his slacks’ pocket to retrieve Peter’s phone. Peter’s heart leaps up at the sight of it.

“Eddie texted you this morning,” Tony deadpans.

Peter snatches it from his hand with a web and unlocks it in a rush. The text message has already been read—thanks a lot for all that privacy, Tony—but it’s definitely from Eddie. Or, at least it’s from Eddie’s number.

 _Sorry, babe,_ the text reads. _Family emergency. I’ll text you when things die down._

It’s such a far cry from anything Eddie would ever say—all his family is dead or MIA, Eddie never texts with full sentences, he barely uses punctuation, he would have called if he wasleaving town—that Peter’s vision goes red around the edges. His heart hammers in his chest, blood thick and hot enough to feel as it courses through his neck.

Peter and Venom are going to eviscerate everyone in their path to Eddie.

The only part of the message that sounds like Eddie is the use of “babe.” But Peter doesn’t need to scroll up more than two messages to see where Eddie used it last, where his imposter lifted the language. The texts are from two weeks ago, when Eddie was running late from work:

 _B home soon_ _  
_ _Love u babe_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dance card has an empty space at: [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Too many warnings to put up here. Check end notes for specific warnings.
> 
> Also, bizarrely, there are Hereditary spoilers in the first section of this chapter.
> 
> [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) is a saint for beta-ing and feeding me the description of a symbiote's face flowing over a human's. Check out the end notes for Subverbal's glorious art for this series.

“Put that thing inside me again and I’ll disembowel you with my teeth,” Eddie grits out, a dangerous growl that rumbles from his belly. Though his tone is even, menacing, his hands shake against the cuffs. No matter how much he threatens, what’s going to happen is going to happen.

And he's afraid.

No Doc today, but all her lab coats are here to do the dirty work for her. They have a larger sample of Carnage in the syringe this time. A bubbling, roiling mass. And it’s just a few inches away from injection.

Track marks like that of a drug addict dot the insides of Eddie’s elbows. They keep a tally for Eddie. He can count how many times they’ve infected him with Carnage: twelve.

Meanwhile, Kasady continues to thump his head against the glass, constant and brutal. Every time the lab coats come in to experiment on Eddie, he’s banging his head like a man possessed. If Peter were here, he might make some _Hereditary_ joke.

 _Okay, Toni Collette,_ Peter might say. _Crawl down off that ceiling._

Venom wouldn’t get the joke, and they’d all have to sit down for an evening of possession horror to revisit the scene where Toni slams her head against the ceiling. Venom would enjoy the mutilation. Peter, even though he’s seen the movie before, would tuck himself under Eddie’s arm in fright. And Eddie would pretend to be unaffected by the decapitation and naked old people, but his nightmares would keep them all up until Peter convinced him _It’s just a movie, babe,_ and Venom vowed to never let any demon possess him—king of hell or otherwise.

The thought sparks a bittersweet smile over Eddie’s face. He’s still lost in that thought when the needle sinks into the vulnerable pocket of his elbow.

Carnage settles in almost immediately, familiar with the pathways of Eddie’s body now. But it no longer greets Eddie like a forcible lover, or even a begrudging roommate. This is the thirteenth time they’ve sucked up a piece of it and shoved it into Eddie. The thirteenth time that Carnage has carved out a home for itself in the inhospitable environment of Eddie. This will be the thirteenth time that Eddie finds a way to exorcise Carnage from his body.

Carnage hates Eddie’s guts by now. Literally.

The moment it merges with Eddie, it changes the shape of his hands and feet to escape the cuffs. Before the lab coats can even flinch, they’re up and out of the cot. It goes straight for Kasady. Or, it tries to at least.

Carnage throws their body against the glass, desperate to get to Kasady and not caring if it cracks open Eddie’s skull. Not caring if his ribs fracture and spleen ruptures. When they can’t get through, it shrieks. And Eddie shrieks with it.

Being bonded to Carnage is agony. Like his skeleton is the wrong size for the rest of his body. Like his blood wasn’t made for his veins. Like a freshwater fish submerged in saltwater. He digs his fingernails into his chest, blind with pain, trying to rip Carnage out with his bare hands.

“Take it out,” somebody says.

“Just let him die.”

“Doc won’t like that.”

Carnage hurls Eddie’s body against the glass again, and this time they crumple to the floor. His arm is broken, crushed at an odd angle away from his body. Eddie doesn’t even feel that pain. All he can feel is Carnage, swollen and poisonous inside him.

Out. He needs it out.

Eddie focuses on isolating Carnage to a specific part of his body, trying to cram it into his stomach so he can vomit it out. In his experience, it's the most reliable way to expel Carnage. He stumbles back towards the cot. But then Carnage cannibalizes the muscles in his legs. They atrophy quicker than Eddie can expel the symbiote. He topples to the floor.

 _You know, if we worked together we could get out of here,_ Carnage whispers to Eddie. But as it makes this promise, it’s gnawing on his hamstrings.

Maybe if Carnage hadn’t killed and eaten his boyfriend, Eddie would feel differently about this proposal. But where things stand, he wants nothing to do with it. He doesn’t care if he escapes. Fuck, he doesn’t care if he _dies._

“You can go fuck yourself,” Eddie mumbles, tongue feeling slow and thick in his mouth.

 _Certainly,_ Carnage replies, _But that means I’m fucking you too._

It seizes control of Eddie’s hand and clumsily puppets it down between his legs. Eddie doesn’t even have the muscle mass to clamp his thighs together. They splay open and inviting. So, Carnage can dig Eddie’s hand under the waistband of his pants and force him to palm himself. His nails catch skin as his fingers sink lower. Eddie doesn't wince.

_Is this what you wanted, Eddie? Does this feel more familiar to you?_

His hand doesn’t feel like his own hand. It sends cold shocks up his arm and settles like ice in his stomach. Cramping and painful. He can feel Carnage spreading the veins in his groin wide open so that more blood can rush through, so that he can get erect. He can feel Carnage flexing the muscles inside him, trying to stimulate his prostate that way.

_Does this make me feel more like Venom?_

Eddie closes his eyes. Wills his body elsewhere.

He thinks of the way Peter’s hair smells—smelled. The way his hair smelled. The soft noises he made as he was waking up, little whining murmurs. Eddie thinks of the fond way Venom liked to wrap Peter in tentacles and gather him to their chest so they could get more of that smell.

Venom especially liked the way Peter smelled when he got back from Spider-Man antics. Sweaty under the suit, body salted and flushed with adrenaline. A little dirty like the city.

They liked to tuck their face into Peter’s shoulder when he was really riled up, when the sweat dripped down his temples and coursed down the column of his neck. They liked to compare the salt of his sweat to the salt of his come.

The deep musk of his come tasted rich, like truffle. And they loved to dig Peter up out of the soil, filthy and debauched. The clean sweat of his skin tasted light, like butter. And Peter was buttery all over, all thighs and buttocks and relaxed muscle.

“He tasted good,” Carnage says aloud and Eddie’s eyes fly open. “When we ate Spider-Man, he tasted good.”

"Holy shit," one of the lab coats says. He's quickly silenced.

Eddie tries to ignore it; Carnage only wants to get a rise out of him. To get his heart pumping faster so it can drink more of his blood.

“He was tender. Succulent,” Carnage continues, rubbing the callus of Eddie’s thumb savagely against the slit of his cock. The friction stings, and he hisses. Carnage chuckles, the same laugh as Kasady's. “Young meat is always better.”

Eddie can’t help the sob that escapes him then. An idea, horrific and tempting, unfolds before him. A way out. A way out of all of this.

Symbiotes can absorb and puppet the bodies of their hosts, true, but the bond is a two-way street. Carnage’s ability to control Eddie’s body is also Eddie’s ability. He just never considered it like that before. Certainty settles over him. It’s a rash decision, but he’s ready.

Eddie hijacks Carnage’s control over his respiratory system. He exhales until there’s no air left in him. And then he paralyzes his own lungs.

Shocked, Carnage fights Eddie to gasp for breath, but he won’t relinquish the scrap of control he’s reclaimed. It convulses his trachea, tremors his bronchus, but his lungs remain stock-still. Eddie starts to feel shrunken under his skin. Black spots dot the periphery of his vision.

_Holding your breath, huh? You know who else does that when they don’t get their way? Children._

Despite his bluing face and hypoxia-induced seizing, Eddie manages to hold his grip on his spasming lungs, and think, _I thought young meat tasted better._

And if that’s the last thing he does, it’ll be pretty in character for him.

Eddie passes out.

 

\---

 

When he comes to, there’s a flurry of activity from the lab coats in his cell. They’re all trying to revive him. Trying to get Carnage out of him. Their jobs are on the line.

 _Uh oh, don’t want to upset the doctor,_ Eddie thinks.

Carnage replies, _Shut_ _up._

Eddie lifts his head to see if they’re starting up the EMP generator. But instead, he accidentally makes eye contact with Kasady in the other cell. Kasady, who has both hands pressed so tightly against the glass that his palms have turned white. Kasady, whose eyes are streaming with tears, who is wailing open-mouthed for Carnage’s return.

Yikes.

The low whine of the generator starts up, and Eddie sags to the floor. The EMP knocks them to the ground, but Eddie is still conscious enough to recognize that the separation process has begun again.

Just like the first time when he was separated from Venom on the docks, Eddie feels distinctly as if he’s being peeled. It’s painful, but also a relief. Like ripping off a bandaid.

When he and Carnage are finally and fully separated, the goopy mass of it crawls weakly towards the glass. It’s just begun to wriggle itself against the seam when the lab coats hit it with another EMP blast. The fragment of Carnage shrivels up to its smallest size and collapses.

His legs are still atrophied, so Eddie has to drag his body across the floor using his arms. Feeling distinctly like the victim of a horror movie, he hauls himself back up onto the cot with the intention of falling asleep.

Sleep doesn’t come. He lies on the bed with his eyes open. He can still feel the traces of Carnage in his bones, ringing in his marrow. Even as the lab coats come in to collect the withered remains of Carnage, even as Kasady slams his head repeatedly against the glass...Eddie remains motionless and awake.

Eddie has been ripped out of his body and crammed back into the empty shell one too many times. He wants this to be over now.

 

\---

 

Eventually, it’s Kasady who breaks the silence between them. He croaks out two syllables, but they’re completely incomprehensible.

Eddie has nothing to say to him. Loathing rolls off of him in waves. He turns his head until he can no longer see Kasady in his peripheral vision. Every time he looks at him, Eddie’s imagination spins out wildly. He can’t see Kasady’s nose without thinking about crushing it under his knuckles. Can’t look him in the eye without wanting to tuck his thumbs into the sockets and _push._

Peter is dead, Venom likely is too, and Eddie has nothing left to live for. He wishes the lab coats hadn’t bothered to resuscitate him. He wishes he’d never had a body to resuscitate.

Kasady tries to communicate with Eddie again, this time coherently. “I lied.”

Eddie doesn’t care. He lets Kasady know this by doing absolutely nothing. Physically, at least. Mentally, he’s cataloguing and indexing ways to separate Kasady’s spinal column from the rest of his body.

“They’re alive. The kid, Peter Parker. Venom. Alive. Both of them. You following me now?”

Eddie’s brain halts. He sits up so fast his head pounds. “Don’t you fuck with me,” he says. “If you fuck with me, I’ll rip off your limbs and _then_ I’ll fuck with _you_.”

“I’m not.” Kasady coughs, just once, but it turns into a spluttering fit. When he’s done, he wipes the blood from his palms onto his scrubs. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

He’s in rough shape. That bum lung has doomed him. Even Eddie can see that. Unless the lab coats allow him to re-bond with Carnage, Kasady doesn’t have much time left.

“The kid. Venom. They’re alive. I saw them. We followed the kid back to Stark Tower. We snatched him right out from under Stark’s nose.” Kasady laughs at this, but it’s a death rattle.

“The fuck are you laughing at?”

“We were going to bring him to Kingpin. But—” Kasady is interrupted by another fit of coughing. This time, he doesn’t bother to cover his mouth and blood splatters over the glass between them.

Eddie waits. He won’t admit it, but he’s breathless and desperate to hear it.

“I was going to bring him in, but your buddy—Venom—it was there. Caught us off guard. We couldn’t snatch the kid.”

And now Eddie has to speak. He asks, as level as he can manage, “And Peter’s hand? What about that?”

“His hand is all we got of him.” Kasady rubs his nose against his shoulder. Even his nose leaves a bloody smear.

Eddie wants to feel relief; he’s so close to it. To having Peter alive, safe. To knowing he could be reunited with Venom. To know Venom is with Peter now, protecting him, searching for Eddie…

But his suspicion lingers. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I figure I’m pretty close to dying here,” Kasady says. “No, no, don’t try to comfort me. I know I’m halfway gone.”

Eddie rolls his eyes.

“And I figure you’re pretty close to giving up. I can’t have that.”

“Why?”

“Because if you give up, you can’t get out of here. And if you can’t get out of here, then you’ll never fuck this place up.” Kasady leans in close to the glass. His breath fogs a light pink. “And I really, really want this place to get fucked up.”

And, at the very least, Eddie can believe that. He leans back into his cot, not saying a word to Kasady. He smiles up at the ceiling.

Alive.

 

\---

 

LAST MONTH… 

“Promise me something?”

They’re lying in bed and Peter has one of Eddie’s broad hands in both of his. He’s playing with his fingers, idle and sweet. Peter usually has such dexterous, slim fingers, but tonight they're slow. Clumsy, even.

It’s late at night, well past midnight, and Peter only just got in. Eddie’s reporter brain kicks in here; he thinks of Peter’s night only in the most basic facts and details:

Tonight at around 11pm EST, Spider-Man was trapped in a burning building, an abandoned office in Astoria. It was a trap laid by an unknown villain. They drenched the building in gasoline, set it ablaze, and sealed Peter in. He only barely managed to escape.

And he didn't escape unscathed. He’s burnt all over, even his pretty, earnest face. Burnt. And Eddie had to very carefully help him peel away the part of the spidey suit that melted to his skin. Eddie cleaned the burns and wrapped them with bandages, Venom fretting in his subconscious all the while.

"Do I look like Deadpool?" Peter joked lightly while Eddie tended to him. Only Venom managed a hoarse chuckle: one exhaled  _Ha._

Eddie never thought that he would add “first aid” to his repertoire of expertise, but he also never thought he’d be a literal cannibal. So, life is full of unpleasant surprises. Especially since he’s in a stable relationship with Spider-Man.

Even now, under the neosporin and gauze, they can smell his singed skin.

Though Peter is already beginning to heal—the blisters turning into scar tissue; the scar tissue turning into soft, pink skin; the soft, pink skin turning into fresh, healthy skin—Eddie’s heart hurts to look at him. That’s why they lie side by side, Eddie’s hand in Peter’s. Every now and then, he and Venom chance a look at Peter, and every time it hurts them more.

Tonight was a close call. Peter might not have come home tonight.

“Promise me something?” Peter says. He always manages to sound plucky, even when his voice is thin and weak. It’s one of Peter’s unintentional cruelties, the deception. The ruse that everything is alright, that he's invincible when he's not.

“Anything,” Eddie and Venom whisper in tandem. They’ll make any promise he asks of them. They’d burst through the atmosphere and haul down the moon if Peter asked.

“Don’t be too upset if I don’t…” Peter trails off, frowns. “Never mind. It sounds stupid.”

Eddie knows what Peter is going to say, but his throat chokes up. It’s Venom who has to say, _What is it, little one?_

Peter sighs. The skin around his elbows is cracked, flaking off, but he props up on one to lean over them. He presses a kiss to their jaw, then nudges their foreheads together. “It’s nothing, babe. Really.”

Eddie cranes his jaw. He gathers the base of Peter’s skull in his broad hand and says, "I promise to wait for you, even if it seems like you aren't coming back."  
  
Peter laughs, "Don't do that. What if I don't come back?"  
  
"Tough. I've already promised."

Peter shakes his head. He gazes into space, lost in thought for a moment before he comes back down to earth. "Alright,” he says at last. “But if you're going to promise that, I promise I’ll always try to come back to you."

Eddie nods. _That seems fair,_ Venom says.

And then, after a long pause, Peter adds, “And if I don’t come back, I have no regrets.”

Eddie eases Peter back onto his back, hushing him. He braces a hand at the base of his neck where the burns aren’t so severe. He rubs his thumb against Peter’s nape. Venom turns the rough skin of his callused thumb into a smooth, slick texture. Peter sighs.

Venom cools the skin of his palms so that Eddie can press his hand to Peter’s healing cheek. The woven pattern of his suit has burnt into the skin there, but Eddie ignores it. Tomorrow, his normal skin will be back. Tomorrow, this will have been a bad memory with a sweet ending.

“I know, sweetheart, I know,” Eddie soothes. But he doesn’t know. None of them know much for certain.

The only thing Eddie is certain of is that Peter Parker will never retire from being Spider-Man. He'll never hang up the mask and live a normal life. When he stops being Spider-Man, it will be because he's dead.

 

\---

 

MEANWHILE... 

Despite how shitty their last experiment went, the lab coats try again later that day. And, predictably, it goes horribly.

Their first mistake is leaving the doctor out of it. Their second mistake is forgoing the syringe. Rather than injecting Eddie with a segment of Carnage, they allow it into the cell. All of it.

Carnage creeps out of its metal box and rapidly scuttles towards Eddie. With his legs the way they are, he can’t even run away. Eddie has to watch with hyperventilating horror as Carnage soaks into his chest.

This time, Carnage stops Eddie’s heart the moment it enters his body. The lab coats rush in to rescue Eddie—just like they did last time, will they never learn?—and Carnage seizes upon the opportunity to infect the smallest of the lab coats.

This escalates quickly.

Carnage forces the lab coat to rip his own fingers off, one by one, all the while demanding that it be reunited with Kasady. The poor kid is screaming his head off and…Christ, Eddie prays that Carnage won’t make that idiom literal.

The other lab coats are scrambling for the EMP generator, but panic is making them stupid. These idiots are in over their heads. Playing god with the gods. They have no idea the forces they’re fucking with, here.

And they’ll just keep doing this over, and over, and over again until Eddie is dead.

Peter is alive. Venom is with him. Eddie can’t die now. He scrubs his hands over his face and sits himself up in the cot. The poor lab coat is now being forced to rip his thumbs off with his teeth. The other lab coats are clamoring over each other to either start up the generator or flee the corridor. Emergency lights and sirens are blaring. All while Eddie remains immobile on the cot. He still can’t stand; there’s not enough muscle left in his legs to even get a solid twitch out of them. But then again, he doesn’t need to stand.

“Enough,” he says.

Eddie is not very loud, but Carnage whips the lab coat’s head around to face Eddie. Its ghoulish grin gleams through the kid’s face. Eddie forces down a shudder.

Wordlessly, he extends an inviting hand to Carnage. His outstretched fingers tremble. Eddie doesn’t care.

Carnage’s face flows over the lab coat’s, overtaking him. It is clearly enticed, but hesitates. “We’ll do things my way?”

“We’ll do things your way,” Eddie sighs. “But first you have to grow the kid’s fingers back." He pauses. "And I want my legs back, too.”

Carnage casts a look over to Kasady. Then, it wraps its claw around Eddie’s hand, creeping up his wrist. “Deal,” it agrees.

And it’s inside of Eddie again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> 1\. Needles. Skip until "Carnage settles in..."  
> 2\. Body horror and a lot of it. I can't really warn for sections on this one. It's the whole damn chapter.  
> 3\. Non-con. The offending section begins with "You can go fuck yourself" and ends with "Eddie closes his eyes."  
> 4\. Suicidal ideation. It's sprinkled in there after "Eddie can't help the sob..." and ends totally after "Eventually, it's Kasady..."
> 
> Also, check out this gorgeous art from Subverbal:  
> 
> 
> If you haven't already, give it some love [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18447689)
> 
> You can force me to cannibalize my own fingers at [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay on this chapter. I was very ill. To apologize, this chapter is extra long.
> 
> Warnings for: violence, symbiote-style cannibalism 
> 
> My eternal gratitude and everlasting affection to [SubverbalDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubverbalDreams/pseuds/SubverbalDreams) for beta-ing

 

Peter and Venom sit in the back of Tony’s Audi Spyder. Usually Peter could appreciate the joke, but frankly, they’re too pissed off.

“Tony,” he says, exasperated. “I  _ know  _ the police can’t track the location of the cell phone with a text message. I  _ know  _ this isn’t  _ Criminal Minds  _ or  _ CSI: Miami  _ or any of the other billion lame procedurals you’ve referenced.. _. _ ”

Tony gasps, all mock outrage. “Show some respect, kid.  _ Law and Order: SVU _ is not a  _ lame  _ procedural.”

“Did it come out in the early 2000s?”

“1999, actually.”

“Then it’s a lame procedural.”

“Alright, listen here,  _ Disney Channel—" _

“Back to the point,” Peter keeps talking at a rapid pace so Tony can’t finish the clapback. _ “ _ I know we can’t trace the text or the call or whatever. Triangulation is basically a guessing game. I know that. What I don’t know is why you’re being such a…such a…”

_ A dick? _ Venom supplies.

Peter nods. “Thank you. A dick. You’re being a dick.”

“Okay, tone down  _ A Beautiful Mind _ back there,” Tony says, distracted. He’s scrolling through his phone. “I’m working on it.”

To clarify, Tony is not driving.

He’s not in the driver’s seat at all; the Audi is self-automated. For some reason, he is  sitting in the passenger seat, wearing sunglasses and drinking an iced coffee. Like they’re in LA or something. Like they’re in LA and Peter’s boyfriend isn’t in  _ mortal fucking danger. _

Tony has a way of being blasé, especially when he’s a key part of someone else’s plan. Sometimes, Peter can admire the coping mechanism. Sometimes, he’s got a frantic symbiote breathing down his neurons.

Peter’s about to really let him have it when Eddie’s old cellphone rings. It’s Anne. His heart picks up and his fingers feel cold.

Peter answers the phone with, “Did you find him?”

He’s surprised to hear Venom’s voice overlap with his own. They haven’t done that before. Venom gives a pleasant squirm in his stomach, momentarily satisfied with their strengthening bond.

Anne sighs. “I’m sorry, Peter, I didn’t. We searched the whole facility, even the underground. Not a trace of him.”

“Damn,” Peter says and rests his forehead against the glass. Then, he’s so frustrated that he knocks his head against the window and repeats himself. “Damn.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Tony says, all paternal. “This isn’t  _ Hereditary. _ ”

“If I hear one more pop culture reference out of you…” Peter grumbles.

“Peter?” Anne prompts from the other end of the line. “I’m still here.”

Peter scrubs a hand over his face. “Sorry, sorry, Anne. I’m with…” He glances up to Tony, scowling. “…Family. Thank you so much for looking. I’ll let you know if we find anything else.”

“Mm, and what if I found something?”

Peter sits up a little. “You found something?”

“Well, you mentioned Kingpin so I did a little research on his latest property developments. Hold on one sec.” Anne’s phone rustles, and Peter can hear the clack of a keyboard.

While she roots through her laptop, Peter pivots the phone and says to Tony, “Researching property developments. We thought of triangulating calls before we thought about  _ property developments. _ ”

“I don’t have a Ph.D. in Real Estate,” Tony says, unfazed, still tapping away at his phone. “Dr. Banner might though. Did you know he has a degree in Nuclear Phy—”

“Still there, Peter?” Anne says.

“We’re still here,” Venom answers for them. Peter can feel its annoyance with Tony grow inside of him, making it difficult to separate his own annoyance from Venom’s.

“Last year, one of Kingpin’s LLCs purchased some real estate in Queens.”

Peter smacks his forehead with his palm. Tony makes another Toni Collette crack, and Peter ignores him. They were just  _ in  _ Queens. He would have been better off staying put.

_ I’m so fucking stupid,  _ he thinks to Venom.

_ Maybe so, but you’re so cute when you are. _

Despite himself, Peter smiles. He asks Anne, “How much real estate?”

“Three blocks,” she says.

Peter blows out his cheeks. “That’s a lot of real estate.”

“There’s more. The city records also show he got a permit for construction on that property six months ago, but when I check Google Earth, it’s still just abandoned warehouses.”

Anne’s pride is audible in her voice. She’s smart, the practical kind. The kind that Peter isn’t when he gets into the heat of things. (It’s why he usually has Ned. Shit, he should really call Ned.)

Peter pivots the phone again. “Tony, I need you to take me straight to—”

Tony lifts up his phone so Peter can see that he already has the address plugged into the GPS. “Three steps ahead of you, kid.”

“Anne,” Peter sighs into the phone. “Thank you.”

“Just bring him home safe. And alive.”

“That’s the plan.”

 

\---

 

So, this whole bonded to Carnage thing. Not great. Eddie isn’t the biggest fan. 

While the lab coats tend to their wounded and contact the higher ups, Eddie adjusts to being consensually bonded to Carnage. It still fits wrong inside Eddie, still not perfectly biocompatible the way Venom was with him.

Mostly Eddie just feels wrong. Like he’s cheating on Venom.

_ We’ll get you to it soon enough,  _ Carnage thinks without patience. It’s sizing up the glass wall between them. Kasady stares back, eyes searching Carnage.  _ Get me to him first. _

Eddie groans. He can just see it now. The moment he allows Carnage to bond with Kasady, they’re going to eat him whole. 

_ And where does that leave me when you bond with him again? _

_ Are we going to do things my way or not? _

It’s not a good point, but it’s a fair one.

They observe the seams of the glass together, Carnage clearly planning to muscle through it with brute force. Eddie was just getting used to having an unbroken body now that Carnage has spruced up his legs, spleen, ribs, and skull. He’s not willing to break himself all over again.

He eyes the lab coats huddled outside their cell. The smallest one is being wheeled away on a gurney. Good. Get that guy out of here.

_ I have a better idea,  _ Eddie suggests.

 

\---

 

Peter hangs up the phone with Anne and cradles it in his hands, suddenly sentimental for the object. This is Eddie’s phone. The phone that he held in those broad, rough palms. He knows it’s a bad idea, but Peter pulls up the messaging app and types in Eddie’s new phone number.

He taps out a message. Deletes it. Through the rearview mirror, he observes Tony.

“How much longer before we get to Queens?”

“Two hours. Take a nap, kid. We got a while.”

Well, he’s certainly not a kid, and he’s  _ definitely  _ not taking a nap like one. So, Peter kills the time by reading through old text message conversations between him and Eddie. Most of them are just practical conversations— _ Home by 6. Okay <3 _ —but some of them hold fonder memories for Peter.

He smiles over a text conversation about Eddie’s new Ethics in Journalism class, which is mostly just a string of complaints from Eddie, punctuated by Peter’s support:

_ Kid just asked me _ __   
_ If im caught plagiarizing am I cancelled? _ _   
_ __ I don’t know what that means

_ He’s asking if he’s going to fail if he plagiarizes babe _

_ OMFG _ __   
_ IT IS ON THE SYLLABUS _ __   
_!!! _ _   
_ __ I dnt get ur generation

_ Well you text like a millennial _ __   
_ Or worse _ _   
_ __ A baby boomer 

_ How dare u _

Before that, there’s another chain of text messages that gets Venom chuckling.

_ Peter sweetheart baby _ _   
_ _ Please don’t tell me u ate the beef in the fridge _

_ Whoops _ _   
_ _ There’s some more in the freezer?  _

_ U R  dead to us _ __   
_ Hungry now _ _   
_ __ Can’t wait for it to thaw

_ Don’t!! _ __   
_ DO NOT EAT IT FROZEN _ __   
_ Eddie! _ _   
_ __ VENOM 

_ Well… _ _   
_ _ We ate it frozen _

_ Unbelievable _

Peter presses his cheek against the window, thinking. He types up that message again, then deletes it.

 

\---

 

Carnage evaporates from Eddie’s body, leaving him standing alone in the cell. Eddie shivers, stumbles forward to the glass, looks a little lost…all of that.

“He’s gone,” he says, wide-eyed and staring at the lab techs. Then his eyes race around the room, scanning the ceiling and walls with desperation. “Where’d he go?”

They turn to each other. They hesitate. Eddie slams his fist against the glass. “It is on the  _ move,”  _ he reminds.

The lab techs open the cell door.

Carnage surfaces from Eddie instantly, bubbling up under his skin. From the look on the lab techs’ faces alone, Eddie can tell the effect is grotesque.

“Do you have to be so dramatic?” Eddie grumbles.

_ Pot meet kettle. _

The lab techs are trying to close the door, but it’s far too late. Eddie and Carnage slide out of the cell with ease, blocking the closing glass door with a single claw.

Carnage smiles down at the huddle of lab techs. They are like rabbits, cowering in the grass, petrified. And Carnage has come to pop off their heads.

It takes up the nearest lab coat in its maw and lifts him off the ground. Eddie braces himself for the crunch of a spinal cord between their teeth. But it doesn’t come.

The lab coat struggles, head encased in the clamp of their jaws, but the rest of his body is scrambling desperately. He leverages both hands against Carnage’s face, kicks against its chest, anything to pry it away.

While Carnage plays with its food, the other lab coats are escaping.

_ Just finish him,  _ Eddie transmits to Carnage. He prefers to speak aloud, doesn’t like traversing the psychic bond between them. But right now he can’t talk; his mouth is full.  _ You’re wasting time. _

_ I’m enjoying myself,  _ Carnage says, sinking its teeth into the lab coat’s neck. From inside their mouth, the man screams.

_ Kasady,  _ Eddie reminds, forcing their head towards Kasady’s cell.  _ You wanted Kasady. _

Carnage chomps off the lab tech’s head and swallows without chewing. It swivels its head to Kasady, nods.

_ How do I open these damn doors? _

Eddie jabs their fist into the green button next to the door. The one that says “open.”

The moment the glass parts, Carnage rips itself out of Eddie’s body and slams into Kasady’s. It’s like watching a slug eat.  Once they’re bonded, they don’t so much as spare a glance for Eddie before they take off running.

Well, it could have been worse. They could have eaten him.

Eddie doesn’t even attempt to call after them; he doesn’t have the time to waste. He scrambles to his feet and looks for a vent, a door, anything.

But when he hears the clamor of people coming down the corridor towards him, he knows the gig is up. Even if he started running now, they'd be on him within moments. He figured this would happen, but it doesn’t suspend the sinking dread in his stomach.

When the lab techs and security guards swarm the corridor, Eddie is back in his cell, sitting calmly on his cot.

 

\---

“How many hours left, Tony?”

Tony is getting so sick of this question that he just lifts the GPS to Peter’s view. Peter leans forward, squinting at the ETA. An hour left.

Tony’s caller ID pops up with an incoming call from Pepper. Tony turns the phone back to himself. 

“Yeah, Pep? Babysitting. Uh huh, uh huh. Be there soon. You complete me.” Turning to Peter, he gives a melodramatic sigh. “No rest for the wicked. I need to head back to Stark labs to take care of a situation. Can you handle a solo rescue mission?”

“I’m not exactly solo,” Peter says at the same time Venom grumbles, “He's not solo if _ I’m _ with him.”

“Great,” Tony says, not really listening. He rolls down the window and sits on the edge. Mostly likely, Tony thinks he looks cool. But really he’s just hunched up against the car roof. “Give me a call if you need me.” He salutes Peter and then tips backwards out of the moving car. His feet propel him off the side of the car.

Before he can hit the ground, Mach 47 has encased him, and Iron Man is rocketing up, up, up and away. While his automated Audi drives on.

Peter rolls his eyes. The drama.

Still, he sort of admires him all the same. Even if he did just abruptly bail on him.

 

\--- 

 

Half an hour later without Tony to pester, Peter is just about coming out of his skin. Venom, too, is getting antsy with so much cortisol and norepinephrine coursing through their system.

_ Maybe you should take a nap,  _ Venom suggests.

“Can’t,” Peter says simply. He plucks up his phone again and scrolls down to bottom of his texts with Eddie. Down to where his imposter sent,  _ Sorry, babe. Family emergency. I’ll text you when things die down. _

Peter bites his lower lip. He taps out the same message he’s been drafting. Deletes it. Then, he taps it out again and hits send before he can think better of it.

_ We’re coming for you,  _ the text reads. It’s intended for both Eddie and his captors.  _ I promise. _

 

\---

 

“So,” the doctor says, calm and polite. A little too polite, like she’s talking to a particularly ill-behaved toddler.

Everything about her body language screams  _ Elementary School Principal.  _ Including the way she perches in a plastic chair, knees crossed, fingers steepled. Under the chair, there is some kind of Ghostbuster backpack.

Peter’s never mentioned Ghostbuster. Is it possible he’s never seen it? When Eddie gets to him, when he’s back with Venom and they’re all together again, he’ll ask.

“I heard that you had some fun this afternoon,” the doctor continues.

“Is it afternoon?” Eddie casts a glance around the windowless cell and dark corridors. “I wouldn’t know.”

The doctor shifts her jaw, the only tell that she’s frustrated. Her smile remains locked in place. “How did you do it?”

Eddie cocks an eyebrow. “Doc, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your lab assistants are totally useless. They literally just  _ let  _ us out. And I mean  _ literally. _ ”

“I’m not talking about your escape, Eddie,” she says. She’s never called him by his first name before. Eddie chalks it up to refusal to refer to him as a professor. The humanities never get the respect they deserve.

“You’re gonna have to clue me in.”

The doctor sighs and reaches down below her chair. She shoulders the pack and advances towards him. Her gait is threatening, but the protective glass still separates them. Which can only mean one thing:

She’s afraid of him.

The doctor reaches into her pocket and Eddie very nearly flinches. But she’s only taking out a cellphone,  _ his  _ cellphone. She uses his face to unlock it, taps at the phone, and thrusts it towards him again.

“How does he know where you are?”

Eddie squints at the screen. His eyes skim over Peter’s contact name, already assuming it’s him, and shoot straight down to the text message:  _ We’re coming for you. I promise. _

And then, like a lightning bolt up his spine, Eddie feels them. Feels Peter and Venom. They’re here. Right now.

Eddie smiles, shakes his head. “I wouldn’t date anyone without a strong investigative streak.”

As subtly as he can, Eddie rocks his neck from side to side as if stretching. He searches the room this way until he spots a flash of red in the dark corridor. Something scuttling on the ceiling.  _ Peter. Baby. _

“Eddie," she says, overly calm,  "For your sake, you should _pray_ that he doesn’t find us,” she says.

His eyes lift up to Peter, who is scuttling on the ceiling above her. Eddie smiles, beatific and finally vindicated. “I’m not much for prayer these days.”

A moment too late, the doctor glances up to the ceiling. It’s a moment too late because Peter drops down directly on top of her. Mid-air, Venom surrounds Peter. They land on the doctor with its talons and fangs out. Eddie has never been more in love.

But apparently, the strange backpack on the doctor’s shoulders serves a purpose. Long tubes inflate from her back, forming dexterous arms with clamps on the ends. Four of them. Plus her arms and legs makes eight.  _ Eight limbs.  _ Forcing Venom up and off of her.

From inside Venom, Peter laughs. “Oh woah.  _ I get it _ . You’re a doctor. Eight tentacles. You’re Doctor Octopus. You know, I think I’ll actually remem—”

He’s cut off when Doc Oc locks a claw around Venom’s throat.

They lash out with all their limbs, but she sinks her tentacle into the mass of Venom, going straight for Peter. There’s a pneumatic hiss from the arm, pumping air and thickening the limb. Eddie can hear Peter splutter for breath.

Eddie presses up against the glass. He wants to tell Peter to let Venom dissolve his body. He wants to tell Venom to keep them both safe.

But then they  _ are  _ dissolving out of Doc Oc’s grasp, and Peter has shot four webs rapid-fire at the offending tentacles. A few more webs strategically slung and she’s pinned to the wall. Eddie gives a little laugh of relief.

His relief is short-lived when Doc Oc says in her calm, sweet voice, “I think I’ll need that back up, now.”

Footsteps, no  _ stomps,  _ head towards them. The entire corridor trembles. Eddie makes brief eye contact with Venom. There’s fear in its eyes. Then he sets his sights down the hall for what’s coming.

Kingpin’s giant form fills the end of the corridor, ceiling to floor. Wall to wall.

Venom lifts an arm and, delayed, Peter fires off a web. Kingpin simply opens his giant paw and catches the web in his palm.

“See,” Kingpin says as he advances towards them. The lights overhead quiver and flicker with each step. “This is why everyone thinks I’m a micromanager.”

His hands are extended, palms up, as if he’s trying to reason with them. But Eddie’s eye catches the detonator curled in his thumb. And the oversized briefcase he’s laid against the wall of Eddie’s cell.

A bomb.

A  _ fire. _

“I’m not a micromanager,” Kingpin says, the beginning of a monologue if Eddie ever heard one. “Things just go… _ wrong  _ when I’m not around. You can imagine how frustrating this is for me.”

Peter is paralyzed inside of Venom, Eddie can tell. He’s freezing up. He can see Venom twitching, trying to guide their body into motion, into action. He can sense the internal battle because it’s a battle that Eddie himself has waged.

“That’s it,” Kingpin says. “Go down easy.”

His arm thrusts out to the center of Peter and Venom’s chest. He knocks them to the ground and stands over him.

Venom slithers off the surface of Peter, withdrawing into him.

Without Venom, Kingpin dwarfs Peter. He settles his feet over Peter’s wrists, directly over his webshooters. Eddie feels a rush of panic spike his heartrate. Spider-Man has never looked so small.

Carefully, almost delicately, Kingpin rolls his weight onto his toes. He crushes Peter’s wrists under his weight. The webshooters crackle and emit a hiss of smoke.

Eddie bangs his fist against the glass, just once, just to get Peter’s attention. “Baby,” he says. “Remember what you promised me?”

Peter’s head only moves minutely towards Eddie.  Short, panicked breaths wheeze through Peter’s nose. He’s not all here. Venom is somewhere within him, possibly reasoning with him, possibly every bit as panicked.

Eddie appeals to them both. “You promised to always  _ try. _ ”

To Eddie’s surprise, this makes Peter laugh. “Okay,” he says, curling his knees up to his chest. He kicks Kingpin in the diaphragm, sending him stumbling back and spluttering. “I guess I’ll do that, then.”

 

\---

 

Belief is a funny thing. In that it’s sort of retrospective.

When Peter first discovered his spidey powers, he didn’t quite believe he had them. Sure, he did the whole  _ flex in the mirror _ thing. And yeah, he spent more time enthusiastically crawling the walls of his bedroom than he’d like to admit.

(And then there was more, a  _ lot  _ more flexing in the mirror because, c’mon, how many pre-teens are  _ ripped _ ?)

But he didn’t believe he was strong until he lifted a car.

He didn’t believe he could climb a wall until he’d he was looking down into the alleyway below, realizing he’d just scaled a parking garage.

He didn’t believe he was a hero until he was Spider-Man.

And now he’s got Eddie—ridiculous, hunky Eddie—looking halfway to death, but he’s still got this expression on his face like Peter could fight the sun if he tried. And win.

And then, of course, there’s Venom. Venom, who is patiently waiting for Peter to,  _ Get it the fuck together. _

So, yeah. Peter could say he believes in himself. But it helps to have others who believe in him, too.

“Okay,” Peter says, as gamely as he can manage. “I guess I’ll do that, then.”

He doesn’t have the webshooters anymore, and that’s just fine. Because Venom is kind of  _ made of webbing,  _ and Peter can just fire off two sticky masses of goop at Kingpin. Works like a charm. The big guy stumbles right off of him.

Doctor Octavius (seriously cool name) is wriggling free, so they should probably take care of that first. Venom slices a claw through her pneumatic tubes. With a sad whine, they deflate. She stops struggling. Problem solved.

Moving onto the next hurdle which is Kingpin advancing. He’s got something in his hand. A pen?

“Taking notes, boss?” Peter asks. "I can lend you mine. I take great notes." He sends out one of Venom’s arms out to investigate. They snatch Kingpin by the wrist and start to pull him closer, liking drawing in a fish on the line.

Eddie shouts, “Wait, no—” at the same moment Peter notices it’s not a pen. It’s a detonator. Kingpin’s thumb flexes down. Venom swells around his hand, trying to pry it from his grasp.

Peter glances back at Eddie. He doesn’t catch his expression in time. The bomb goes off.

 

\---

 

Venom and Peter ignite in flames.

For a moment, Eddie is unable to look away. He can’t quite process what he’s seeing, so he stares. He watches them stumble to the ground, can smell the char of flesh, can hear the thump of their body against the floor…

Eddie has to look away. He has to.

His eyes drop down to where the briefcase bomb lay. It’s no more than a burnt mark in the ground and cracked glass.

Cracked glass?

“Well,” the doctor says from her entrapment on the wall, sighing. “That was a waste.”

“I thought that went well,” Kingpin counters, patting his hand against his chest pocket. He’s looking for a cigar. When he finds it, he leans down to ignite it on Venom’s motionless body…still burning in patches.

“I disagree,” the doctor snipes. “That was our last known sample of a symbiote.”

From the rafters, a grating double-speak. High and raspy, more than a little mad. They say, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Doc.”

And then there’s a blur of red symbiote that crashes directly into Kingpin.

Eddie rolls his eyes. He doesn’t have  _ time  _ for Carnage’s theatrics. While Carnage makes a meal of a mob boss, Eddie gets to the ground and kicks out the shattered glass until there’s a hole big enough to scrape through.

Venom and Peter are slumped on the ground only a few feet down the hall. Eddie crawls out of his cell and heads straight for them, bare feet catching on glass and rubble as he goes.

Before, he had interpreted their slump on the ground as completely motionless. Now he realizes that Venom is slowly shifting around Peter.

And slowly, slowly, they sit up.

With a sharp inhale, Eddie reaches out and brushes his fingers lightly over Venom. The ache to touch, just  _touch_ Venom is overwhelming. The kind of ache that sings down to his marrow and reverbs through his whole body. The moment they come into contact, Eddie's body stills.

_ Hello, sweetheart.  _ It seeps into him tentatively, just the beginning of the bond. Eddie understands its slowness; Venom is savoring him. 

“Are you alright?” Eddie pushes his hand in towards Peter. “Is everyone alright?”

Peter’s face, that perfect face, filters out from Venom. He smiles, and Eddie is awash with emotion. Not quite like the ache of wanting Venom, but something different. Something more tender and less selfish. Venom taught Eddie self-love. Peter taught him a different kind of love all together.

“My suit has a fire extinguishing protocol,” Peter says, tapping the Iron Spider suit from within Venom. “We should get you one of these.”

Peter’s eye catches something behind Eddie. There’s a roar and crunching noise. Peter flinches. “But, hey, we should probably skedaddle.”

Eddie glances his shoulder over to where Carnage is gnawing on Kingpin’s ankle as he tries to kick it away from himself.

“Yeah, alright,” Eddie says with a soft chuckle. He withdraws his hand from Venom. They can bond later. “Let’s skedaddle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join me for a completely unhinged thing I'm doing now called "torture tuesday" at [barb-aricyawp](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/).


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